"Still Frames" Solo Ehibition @ p|m Gallery

Otino Corsano: Still Frames

January 20 – February 24, 2007

Opening reception January 20, 6 – 8pm

Otino Corsano has worked as a freelance storyboard artist for several years. He thrives on the simple and dynamic process of this quick art of drawing anything described. Corsano receives a telephone call from a producer, meets a director, and listens and visualizes filmic ideas in detail. Reflection on this 'conceptual' task motivated this series of paintings "Still Frames'.

The compositions for the "Still Frames" series were planned as storyboard-sized ink drawings on primed parking receipts. Corsano imagined the receipts as demarcating real yet untraceable ‘locations’ in and around the city of Toronto. Stills from commercial films served as appropriated reference material. Corsano uses two-person shots derivative of both interview and soap opera mise en scenes. Originally, these small ink drawings included text. The text boxes remain in the final paintings as windows through the Plexiglas works referencing the present gallery wall and space.

These paintings are documents of fictional cinematic spaces reconfigured by the potential for the viewer to enact new narratives. The frozen filmic event remains in a state of incompletion as a result of the missing text and displaced context. The scenes depict decisive moments without transition.

Painting is a primary aspect of Otino Corsano’s conceptual art practice. His investigations are new genre works evolving from hybrid painting modes. Meaning production, more than formalism, is the scope of Corsano's paintings. Since completing an MFA at Otis College of Art in Los Angeles, his anti-stylistic experiments continue to be informed by West Coast discourses.

Otino Corsano currently lives in Toronto and teaches at the Ontario College of Art and Design. His writings on art and artist interviews are published in artUS Magazine.

For further information on this exhibition and gallery programming please contact Powell, Director of p|m Gallery: info@pmgallery.ca or 416.937.3862. To preview work by these and other artists please go to www.pmgallery.ca.

p|m Gallery is located in Toronto's east end at 1159 Dundas Street East, (nearest intersection is Dundas Street East & Carlaw Avenue); the gallery entrance is off of the lane on the west side of the building. Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday 11am – 6pm, all other times by appointment or chance.