Local Light

press release

"Local Light"
Robert Kananaj
Installation, sculpture
Nov 2020 - May 2021

Artist's statement
Physicality is an omnipresent element in our lives.
We all create social networks: Physically we create cities, families, societies, groups, 
and in that way we extend our individual context of physicality.

As there came to be a conversation about arresting the pandemic, it highlighted our social map and network; our individual restrictions pointing to our own family, our own small community encouraged to socialize as little as possible. To break the chain of transmission within the very fabric of our own making,  we have had to restrict each others' physical socializing. 

When faced with readymade objects, we each have our own individual take, subjective as is each of us.
Local Light Project is made of several main projects: "Social Commentary", "Melting Pot Society", "Global Globe", "Archeology of Now", "Social Cemetery", and more.
I started the projects more than two years ago by locally collecting empty pots. The cooking pots are put in a long line, like an immigration line, leading to an area where they create a cluster, piled on top of each other, a reference to the melting pot society that we have become. Many people from around the world, of different countries and nationalities, have gathered and created many neighbourhoods in one place, in one city. Toronto is truly a Melting Pot. 

On my daily walks from home to the gallery, I came across a billboard peeled off a facade by the wind, and it had obstructed the sidewalk. By the time I had rolled it up to remove it and free the path, I had made up my mind to carry it with me to the gallery. There I began to peel off layers, revealing information as an Archeology of Now. This is my tribute to a dead tree.

In the Global Globe project, industrial blue lines fabricated for prosthetics, are as highways of heaven on earth, reference to an individual culture or spirituality contained within clustered globes.  The cities that we have created, of which we are part, make us a part of what they can offer. A city is like an individual, an individual is like a city. Cities in their multitude of kinds are a global connection, as the global globe is within each individual. 
The only globe we live as part of, is shared by the same means; as we move from one place to another, we travel the same globe to another part. We transfer cultures as we move from place to place. Sometimes we keep that integrity of global perception as we move along; rather than blending, we just keep the tradition of each stream we come from, as a time capsule.
A country is like a Local Light; so is a city, or an individual, and so is the globe.
The Global Globe is the individual Local Light in the context of a larger galactic point of view; the local light is the main reference to inclusiveness, as we individually carry the basics of what makes our lives social and shareable, concerning and workable, celebrating and mourning.
So this is a Local Light: oneself coming to a realization, information, anything, any structure that we use to reach to each other as individuals, to create webs of social meanings and cities. What we have made is what we receive in common.

The Social Commentary Project addresses within endless reach the anonymity of artworks.
So many artworks of artists which are actually around our big city, so few make it to be shared publicly in the few galleries there are. Gallery's exhibiting capacity is very limited. More than two years ago, in a deconstructed anniversary exhibition of gallery artists' work, to address anonymity, we added an island of hundreds pieces by artists both known and unknown, waiting for adoption. All at the tail-end of their journey - pieces found all around, in our house and relatives' houses, at the curb-side, at garage sales during summertime.
From the start, the Social Commentary project has occupied the main entrance of the gallery, and now it blends into the Local Light exhibition. 
Unknown artists and artworks, exhibited as a garage sale, with no connection to each other, like members who do not necessarily relate to each other but create neighbourhoods.  

We as galleries are choosing to be inclusive to few artists. So is undermined the importance of individuals in the city. The city carries on by highlighting a  few common issues, inclusive to endless walks of life and individuals, which in return depend on each individual having to do their own part to achieve.

Social commentary sparks interests in me.
There was a time when knowing your neighbours, greeting casually and knowing each other by name was a norm; for some it still is. Now that is almost nonexistent, all that is different. 
Most of the art works here were at some point in their known environment, as old neighbourhoods. here they are in an unknown environment individually, but clustered beside - next door neighbouring artwork with the gallery's working artists.
Artworks at this project are like people in a neighbourhood, living in houses, as strangers beside each other, sharing each others' existence but functioning independently.
Neighbourhoods are inclusive. We let each other co-exist, obeying common rules and ethics,  and we function as perfectly as we can individually. 
The artworks in this project are, and have been on their own journey as a social commentary, too. At this point, they are being shared in one Garage Sale. They may appear chaotic in this context, like the city is from the point of view of an individual human.
In the city we are known by few individuals, and the rest remains mere presence, numbers.
So are these artworks here:  A reference to how much for granted we take our neighbours although they may be as perfect as we think of ourselves. A connection may occur with random people who come in contact with them in the gallery, who like a piece that you never thought of, but to whom it's meaningful. 
So is the city, networked and intertwined, making sense to each of us individually, differently.

From garage to virtual sale faced with nowadays has become the only option experiencing. 
Social Cemetery. Such a term never occurred to me until I became aware of everyone on their own at some place - home, office, street, outdoors - alone. Social distancing is required at this time. Socializing is being done on gadgets. That is a social cemetery to me. The relevance of things, and people, the relation between them has highlighted  timely detachment.

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