Exhibition -

KATHARINE MULHERIN CONTEMPORARY ART PROJECTS, TORONTO

presents

MICHAEL CAINES

Revelations of Dog

and

GOODY-B WISEMAN

Wild Child

February 11 –March 7 , 2010

Opening Reception: Thursday, February 11^th from 6 to 9 pm

GALLERY HOURS: WED-FRI 11-6pm, SAT 12-6pm, SUN 1-5pm

Katharine Mulherin is pleased to present new bodies of work by artists Michael Caines and Goody-B Wiseman from February 11-March 7, 2010.

Michael Caines' new drawings are from his upcoming book, "Revelations of Dog", slated for publication in November of 2010 from Mark Batty Publisher, distribution in North America by Random House. This is the second in a series of five books from Mark Batty, by five contemporary artists, all based on the Book of Revelation.

For inspiration, Caines looked to illustration from the early 1900's - Winsor McCay's "Little Nemo in Slumberland" in particular – along with Goya's "Caprichos", and favorite childhood books like Alice in Wonderland and The Wind in the Willows.

"Revelation" originated as a call to arms by John the Divine for Christians to bear up under the yoke of the Romans. Since then, it has been used as a kind of tabula rasa on which political and religious conflicts of all kinds have been projected, and is a foundational text for millenarian religions like the Seventh Day Adventists and the Jehovah's Witnesses. The poetry of the book, ripe with wild imagery, has always resisted scholarly interpretation. This writing - both hectoring and surreal – continues to drive cultish religious movements, while also finding expression in pop culture: there is more than a whiff of Revelation in the spate of apocalyptic Hollywood movies that have appeared in the last few years.

The artist takes a broad approach to the text, one that ranges from pure fantasy to politics - Sarah Palin as the whore of Babylon for example - and largely utilizes animal imagery: God is a giant black poodle! Caines has folded political cartooning into the project as a way to inject current themes into an historic work. This approach is playfully in line with historicist interpretations of Revelation, wherein the text is seen as a kind of map of history, prefiguring events and figures of significance.

In Caines' "Revelation of Dog", the rich imagery of Revelation has spawned a strange new cast of characters, as he draws on a diversity of graphic traditions to create work that is sure to delight both long time fans and new viewers alike.

Wild Child is the latest body of work by multi-media artist Goody-B. Wiseman, bringing her obsession with feral children, wildness and civilization, narrative and folklore to life in a series of miniature but sprawling bronze sculptures.

Ever since creating a miniature museum about a fictitious colony of feral children for the 2006 California Biennial, Wiseman has been fascinated with feral children and they've become the primary focus of her artistic production. This work began as an immersive sculptural expression both of institutional critique, bending the museums ability to represent Truth, and an anthropological allegory of the feral child as Otherness and in-between-ness, pushing the boundaries of our anxiety about the borders between savagery and civilization. Now her feral series delves into the fantastical, the beautiful and terrible, evoking fairy tales, mythology, folklore and aboriginal traditions, and above all the primal drive in humans to both fear and desire conversance with wildness.

The two bronze sculptures, America and America Too, feature a cavalcade of tiny little girls in buffalo suits, they've gone over the cliff and hang together, en-masse, in a state of falling and being caught, on the brink of either total devastation or total redemption. The sculptures Deer Pile and I Love You I love You I love You feature children and deer in that uncomfortable and sexual process of trying to become one with each other in a raw and unforgiving state of natural selection that remains indifferent to human desires. Many of the sculptures feel like dreams of conquest, transcendence and fluidity.

Wiseman reworks established forms in her own crooked way, investing them with the pulse of the current socio-psychological moment. Her bronze work plays with the traditions of monumental figurative and wildlife bronze sculpture, her figures are neither monumental nor noble, they are small and inexact and hand-worked and raw. Her work is informed by the elegant simplicity of early conceptual art and a baroque mélange of influences play off of that foundation; science fiction, folk tales, experimental literature, anthropology, mythology and horror movies – for example, are evident in the work. This exhibition reveals the growing influence that living in Los Angeles had on Wiseman's work as she brings her fascination with the darker parts of the psyche and our culture to bear on the simple drive toward wildness and nature.

Michael Caines is a New York based artist working in drawing and painting. His work has been exhibited in commercial, public and artist run galleries in Canada, and commercial galleries in the US, as well as numerous international art fairs with Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects, where he is represented in Canada. Caines has participated in a number of artist residencies, including the Santa Fe Art Institute, the Millay Colony, and Jentel. Among other awards, he has received Avery and Chalmers Fellowships, and a grant from the Joan Mitchell foundation. He has been selected for residencies at the Bemis Center in Omaha for the coming year. A fifteen-year survey of his painting and drawing, titled "Passing Glory" will open at the Art Gallery of Peterborough and tour Canada in 2010. Caines recently completed his MFA at Parsons the New School.

Goody-B. Wiseman is a multi-media artist who lives and works in both Los Angeles and Downeast Maine. She received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2005 and a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 2000. Wiseman's art and films have been included in museum exhibitions at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, Spain, the Pompidou Centre, Paris, France, the Orange Country Museum of Art in Newport Beach, CA. and The New Brunswick Museum. She has had exhibitions at Katharine Mullherin Contemporary Art Projects (Toronto), Mandarin Gallery (Los Angeles), Second Gallery (Boston), Bonelli Contemporary, (Los Angeles), Third Space, (St John, NB), L.A.C.E. and Angstrom Gallery (Los Angeles), Participant, INC (New York), John Connelly Presents (New York). Wiseman has received grants from the Artitist's Fellowship in 2009, Murphy Cadogan Foundation in 2004, Nova Scotia Arts Council in 2002 and 2001 and has participated in the Struts Gallery Open Studio Residency in 2001 and 2007. Her art has been collected by the

Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA, the 21^st Century Art Museum, The Richard Weisman Collection, Seattle, WA, as well as the Nova Scotia Art Bank and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Canada. She has also written for C Magazine International and spoken/lectured extensively in Canada and the United States.