Jon Sasaki: Good Intentions

Additional Information

Organized by the Doris McCarthy Gallery, University of Toronto Scarborough in partnership with the Kenderdine Art Gallery, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, Southern Alberta Art Gallery, MacLaren Art Centre, Prairie Art Gallery, and Dunlop Art Gallery.

Opening Reception: Friday, February 1 at 7:00 pm
Artist Talk: Saturday, February 2 at 1:00 pm

Artist Jon Sasaki's work takes on heavy subjects like pathos, tragedy, futility, and cynicism, infusing them with unsettling humour. The artist creates immanently relatable, yet pathetic characters, challenging them with absurdly Sisyphean tasks. In the face of their struggles, they nonetheless radiate with unflagging, infectious optimism, eliciting responses both empathetic and tinged with schadenfreude. Comprised of new work, and a selection of videos, objects, and performance situations produced over a five year period, Good Intentions include a series of videos featuring Sasaki's Everyman character as a sad protagonist courting various failures, a used-car lot inflatable flyguy whose dancing triggers his own motion sensor causing him to fall repeatedly; and a functional sno-kone stand, where a snowman mascot serves gallery visitors this delicious, but unseasonably frosty treat. How refreshing!

Good Intentions is accompanied by a full-colour hardcover monograph with essays by Ann MacDonald, Crystal Mowry, and Ben Portis.

Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist Jon Sasaki borrows Conceptual art strategies to make works with an emotionally resonant core. His solo exhibition, Good Intentions, organized by the Doris McCarthy Gallery at the University of Toronto Scarborough has toured extensively across Canada; Dunlop Art Gallery's exhibition will complete its itinerary. Sasaki has also participated in group exhibitions at VOX (Montreal), The Vancouver Art Gallery, the Owens Art Gallery (Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB), Simon Fraser University Gallery (Burnaby, BC), as well as the 2006 and 2008 editions of Toronto's Nuit Blanche. Sasaki holds a BFA from Mount Allison University and is represented by Jessica Bradley Art + Projects.

Jon Sasaki, Free Sno-Kones, 2013.