vicinity unknown

Laura Taler
Jiri Ladocha

On view 17.05 - 26.06.2019

Despite its name, we can trace the origin of Gallery1718 back to the summer of 2016, when Petra and David Miller, a Canadian-Czech husband–wife team opened our inaugural exhibit. The following autumn show, titled On an Egg, curated by Pavel Vančát, was composed around the occasion of the grand exhibition of Josef Sudek, a Czech art photography legend, in the National Gallery of Canada. During his trip to Toronto, Pavel had the opportunity to stay at Jiri Ladocha’s home and studio. The rest is history. For the next three years, Jiri has welcomed many Czech artists in his home, offering a cozy, warm environment, a good meal and heartfelt conversation. I perceive Jiri as an indispensable benefactor and avid supporter of our gallery and its quests. We are very pleased to dedicate the gallery’s final exhibition to Jiri 's work along with Laura Taler, a Canadian artist living in Ottawa.

When I introduced Laura to the Gallery1718 project, she was instantly interested in a collaboration, and so I directed her to Toronto to meet Jiri personally. What a surprise it was, when we found out that Laura lived in Jiri's vicinity, almost next door, for years... except they never met; until now.

Laura Taler

Laura Taler, a Romanian-Canadian artist living in Ottawa, began her career as a contemporary dance choreographer before turning her attention to filmmaking and visual art.  Throughout her career Taler has explored the links between movement, memory, and history by using cinematic and choreographic devices to articulate how the body is able to carry the past without being oppressed by it.  She has been a resident at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Centro Cultural Recoleta (Buenos Aires), Carleton Immersive Media Studio (Ottawa), and a fellow at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry (Berlin). Her work has been screened in festivals, exhibitions, and broadcast internationally.  Awards include a Gold Hugo from the Chicago International Film Festival, the Best Experimental Documentary award from Hot Docs!, and Best of the Festival from New York’s Dance on Camera Festival.  Publications include Tension/Spannung (Turia+Kant, 2010), Revisiting Ephemera (Blue Medium Press, 2011) and Embodied Fantasies (Peter Lang Publishing, 2013). 

Laura Taler wishes to thank Marcus Elliott, John Ancheta, Sasha Phipps, the department of Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa, Mitchell Frank, and Saul Frank Taler for their contributions to this exhibition. 

Jiri Ladocha

Jiri Ladocha was born in 1942 in the former Czechoslovakia and reborn in Toronto in the autumn of 1968. Over the span of his 35-year career as a professional fine artist, he has achieved an international reputation as a critically acclaimed, highly skilled and original painter and sculptor. A master in the application of mixed media including plaster, gold and silver leaf, graphite and pigment, Ladocha is renowned for his ever-evolving exploration and evocation of the textures, hues and sensibilities of the Old and the New Worlds. His symbolic portrayals of a visual universe have been celebrated in such notable series as Urbs Perdita, Lost Souls, The New Alchemy and Dreaming of a Story, The Story of a Dream.

Ladocha's work has been exhibited widely, in both commercial galleries and public museums, across Canada, the United States and Europe. He is represented in numerous public, private and corporate collections on both sides of the Atlantic, including the Guggenheim Museum in New York. His work, life and philosophy have been the subject of more than thirty publications and documentaries.