From the Globe:
Toronto art star’s mosaics will grace Dufferin underpass
Luis Jacob’s wide and varied career has made him a success internationally – now’s he’s making his mark in his hometown
Katie Hewitt
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Published on Friday, Jul. 16, 2010 7:35PM EDT
Local artist Luis Jacob has exhibited all over the world – but he’s still waiting for Toronto to fully take him in.
Mr. Jacob, a South American-born, Scarborough-bred artist, took his work to the Guggenheim in New York City. Legions of starving artists would trade their tinned food for an exhibit there. And Mr. Jacob, part of the group exhibit, Haunted, at the Guggenheim until September, got wall space with the likes of Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman and Robert Rauschenberg – contemporary art icons.
But in his hometown Toronto, he’s still something of an underground figure. For over 15 years, the 39-year-old has been involved in the city’s art scene: everything from curating queer arts shows to playing with indie band The Hidden Cameras, to co-founding a free, community-run school. His work has exhibited internationally and at the AGO. But as prolific as he is, his artistic reputation hasn’t yet solidified. He says he’s still waiting for people to “connect the dots,” to link all his various projects to the one driving force behind them.
Soon, Mr. Jacob will have another chance to make his mark – his work has been chosen to line the interior walls of the underpass at Dufferin and Queen Streets. The city held a public art contest to revamp the space, set to be completed by summer 2011, and Mr. Jacob won by a unanimous vote of the selection committee.
Mr. Jacob was born in Lima, Peru, but immigrated to Toronto with his family in 1981 at the age of 10, so it was here, he says, that he “really came of age as an artist” (the “Dufferin jog” is in his old Parkdale neighbourhood). He was part of the city’s “explosion of artists’ collectives” in the 1990s, and, among other initiatives, was part of Truck Stop 12, art displayed in a van that toured Toronto. Mr. Jacob became curator-in-residence at the University of Toronto’s Blackwood Gallery in Mississauga while he studied philosophy there, before graduating in 1996.
But something got lost in translation. “It’s something that happens to all artists,” says Mr. Jacob of his sporadic presence on Toronto’s art scene, “some people know your newer work and some people know your older work, or you’re known for different work in different places. In Europe, I’m best known for my Albums.” These mixed-media montages, which he displays on laminate without frames, are images made from magazines and found photographs. “But I haven’t had an Album in Toronto in seven or eight years.” Currently, Mr. Jacob’s Albums are in Copenhagen, New York and Montreal.
His roster of international exhibits also includes Korea and The Netherlands, and one of only two Canadian invitations for Documenta (12), one of the most notable modern and contemporary art exhibits (the first featured Picasso and Kandinsky), held every five years in Kassel, Germany.
Now Mr. Jacob is straddling two projects: breaking out on the international art scene, and waiting on construction glitches that have already delayed his installation in Toronto – the works are worlds apart. The Dufferin jog, an unsightly railway underpass filled with graffiti, is hardly the Guggenheim.
Location was something Mr. Jacob considered carefully before submitting his entry to the City of Toronto’s public-art competition. The artwork had to resonate with pedestrians up close, and at a distance in moving vehicles, and the medium had to be durable enough to endure the weather.
Mr. Jacob chose mosaics for this reason, and because “they’ve traditionally been used to ornament public space,” he says.
His artistic selection was bold, with tie-dye patterns and bright colours, meant to instantly evoke an association, like “sunbursts,” but also meant to linger with the viewer, and leave them with a sense of otherworldliness. He hopes the work, titled The Hall of Community’s Spirits, will evoke a living presence.
“You start to subscribe the picture with a consciousness. What does it take for a work of art to be alive?” Mr. Jacob wonders.
He wants the abstract work to create a haunted feeling, “almost an un-human quality of uncanny, like it’s looking at you,” he says of the “eyes” that appear in every colour-burst patterned panel.
Mr. Jacob says he “wanted to create a sense of presence within the underpass.”
And hopefully, a stronger presence in his city.
