This is an archived event from Culture Days 2025.
Images
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![In-studio detail view of wall-sized abstract painting comprising many smaller paintings of various colours in sweeping strokes, fields, and funnelled forms]()
John Climenhage, untitled (phase 2); signs/signals/desire (in-studio detail), 2025, oil on panel, dimensions variable -
![In-studio view of wall-sized abstract painting comprising many smaller paintings of various colours including reds, greens, and yellows; curved and funnel-shaped forms are interspersed and entangled with geometric shapes and lines with harder edges]()
John Climenhage untitled (phase 2); signs/signals/desire (in-studio view), 2025 oil on panel dimensions variable -
![Single panel detail painted in greens, with funnel-shaped curves and rectangular geometries rendered with visible brushstrokes; darker green areas appear to recede, creating a sense of volume and space]()
John Climenhage untitled (phase 2); signs/signals/desire (single panel detail in green), 2025 oil on panel dimensions variable -
![Single panel detail with brushy cream-coloured swells and hard-edged red curves interspersed with meandering strokes in brick reds and browns]()
John Climenhage untitled (phase 2); signs/signals/desire (single panel detail in reds), 2025 oil on panel dimensions variable
The Contingent Image: Hands-On Curatorial Workshop with John Climenhage at 401 Richmond
In-person
Interdisciplinary Painting Visual artsDate and time
Location
401 Richmond Street West (Critical Distance Centre for Curators — Suite 122)
401 Richmond Street West
Toronto, ON
Directions: Critical Distance is located in Suite 122 on the first floor at 401 Richmond Street West, down the hall from Tangled Art + Disability just before the open area of Urbanspace Gallery, and around the corner from Trinity Square Video.
Access
Free.
Offered in English.
Wheelchair accessible and has gender-neutral washrooms.
About
Presented in celebration of Ontario Culture Days 2025.
Critical Distance is a not-for-profit project space devoted to curatorial research, practice, and experimentation. For Ontario Culture Days, we will open our Fall exhibition, The Contingent Image, with an opportunity for visitors to engage in a hands-on curatorial workshop.
In conversation with artist John Climenhage and curator Shani K Parsons, participants will be encouraged to experiment and explore their intuitions, thought processes, and motivations in creating a remixed arrangement of a series of Climenhage's original paintings.
Once participants have completed their composition, they will have the opportunity to give it a new title, and to receive a photo or print of it as a record of their unique curatorial experiment.
Links
- Event registration form docs.google.com
- Critical Distance Instagram instagram.com
- About the artist climenhagejohn.wordpress.com
Organizer
Critical Distance Centre for Curators
Critical Distance Centre for Curators (CDCC) is a not-for-profit project space, publisher, and professional network devoted to the support and advancement of curatorial inquiry and practices in Toronto, Canada, and beyond.
With a focus on critically-engaged, collaborative, and cross-disciplinary curatorial practices, experimental and underrepresented perspectives and approaches, and wider public outreach and education on curating and exhibition-making, Critical Distance is an open platform for diverse curatorial perspectives, and a forum for ideas on curating as a way to foster meaningful connections across cultures, disciplines, geographies, and generations.
Partners
Ontario Arts Council arts.on.caThis event is part of a hub:
Ontario Culture Days 2025 at 401 Richmond
Ontario Culture Days Toronto, ONJoin Ontario Culture Days and 401 Richmond organizations and artists for a full day of free, participatory activities on September 20, 2025, from 12pm - 5pm. 401 Richmond Street West is a restored, heritage-designated, industrial building...