The 16th installment of Come Up To My Room (#CUTMR) is an alternative design exhibition that provides a platform for experimentation outside the norms of art and design, at the edges between intention and interpretation. Freed from the constraints of traditional practice, CUTMR encourages spatial exploration that engages our senses, our memories and our perceptions of reality. The exhibition challenges participants to push their everyday practice by offering a blank canvas upon which to explore new themes and ways of working. Framed within the backdrop of the historic 130-year-old Gladstone Hotel, CUTMR invites artists and designers to create site-specific, immersive installations that stimulate the imagination and encourage discussion and dialogue between contributors and visitors alike. The Gladstone welcomes Jana Macalik & Jennie Suddick as the curatorial team for CUTMR 2019.
Fraktur by [R]ed[U]x Lab explores expansion and contraction and how they can make a static room feel alive. Fraktur breathes life into an otherwise dark and confined space. Akin to the mechanics of organic beings, Fraktur creates the sensation of breathing that is naturally associated with life and its reaction to humans. It may evoke fear, claustrophobia, curiosity, or maybe even comfort as visitors enter the room. As soon it senses the presence of a wanderer, it reacts defensively. The walls begin to breathe and expand, occupying a greater amount of space. Glowing cracks are revealed in its once uniform jet-black skin as it attempts to interact eerily with the foreign entity. One may feel as if one has entered into the belly of a beast as the pulsating walls close in.
Ryerson Architecture’s [R]ed[U]x Lab is a collective of designers. Rooted in design inquiry and innovation, the group investigates the intersection between contemporary standards and emerging technologies to inform projects ranging from household products to immersive installations.
TRON209 by Bruno Billio has transformed a studio into a black light version negative of itself. He loves to re-contextualize common objects and space into visions from his dreams.
Bruno Billio is a self-taught artist working from an interdisciplinary background. At once an installation artist, a sculptor, and a designer, Billio creates challenging works informed by his command of each of these practices. His artistic practice is informed b the active displacement and staging of the found object, a contemporary art strategy with a historically established lineage. The everyday is reinterpreted through its spatial and contextual re-appropriation by the artist, interventionist and an inventor by de-familiarizing the everyday object.
Connect by Safoura Zahedi is part of an experimental design series entitled Beyond the Surface, exploring geometry and its potential as a contemporary universal design language. This visual dialogue unites the subtle and meaningful order of our universe by reflecting the unseen. These explorations adopt principles of fractal geometry and use two-dimensional patterns to create three-dimensional spatial experiences. The experimental designs seek to reflect the universal language of Unity as derived from multiplicity, and transport the viewer from immersion in the mundane to serene contemplation.
Safoura Zahedi is a Toronto-based designer fascinated with learning about the geometric structure of our universe. Her work translates geometry as a universal language of Unity, through a process of merging traditional analogue design methods with contemporary digital technology and fabrication.
Richelle Sibolboro 