28 May–26 June, 2004
Opening Thursday, 27 May, 7–9pm

What the World's Like With the Words We Like is a two-person exhibition featuring works by Toronto-based artists Allison Hrabluik and Zin Taylor. Although using very different formal strategies, both artists have created fictions which, at first glance, act like dreams of imagined narratives. Like the exhibition title suggests, both artists' works play upon the idea of a person, place or thing and the ways in which that idea can be described. Each uses heavily idiosyncratic modes of description to articulate their narratives while at the same time embellishing their work with popular motifs that, in the case of these works, underscore a certain allegory.

Allison Hrabluik's two films use cleverly created scale models, photographs and photocopies which have then been filmed using stop-motion animation. The subject of her films are structured upon specific locations which then act as backdrops for fictitious events both poignant and banal. Stereotype and cliché are used to specifically locate the scenes while the character's actions and the narrative itself act to dissolve that cliché and create the aura of a dream. The films act like distant memories of a place, or more specifically, the artist's imagined idea of what a place would be like. The artist is perhaps constructing false memories through a staged depiction of places and actions, which carefully distill artifice into a real sense of place.

Zin Taylor also uses people and places in a way that shifts between fiction and nonfiction. Through language, fashion and personal expression, individuals try to control their position within a societal order and through this, distinctions of difference are marked and subcultures are created. Taylor's work uses this basic model to create a complicated narrative about the construction, maintenance and evolution of language and meaning within a specific subculture. The use of real video footage in combination with sculpture, drawing and photography utilize references to both art history and fantasy/mythology, create Taylor's elaborate statement about the construction of an identity. That identity and its composition is a continuing theme in Taylor's work. Although the characters and environments may change, the work is continually layering fiction onto a factual existence in order to further embellish the story and replace/reposition the lines that have been drawn.