You and Me
(and the Mouse in the Moon)

Narwhal Projects is delighted to present You and Me (and the Mouse in the Moon), California-based artist Souther Salazar’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Salazar works in painting, drawing, sculpture, animation, and more, creating densely-layered universes that offer aspirational spaces for dreaming, thinking and being. Salazar’s aesthetic is a pleasing hybrid of classic children’s book illustrations and narratives, Modernist abstraction and the vernacular of contemporary illustration. Lacking irony or other types of distantiation, Salazar’s work bravely occupies a genuinely charming space and aesthetic that serves to put forth his propositions for ways of being in the world, together.

The new drawings, paintings, and sculptures comprising You and Me (and the Mouse in the Moon) are all drawn from a loose, poetic narrative Salazar wrote tracing the shared dreamy existence of two protagonists. In it this unnamed twosome tentatively shift between joyful, cloistered domesticity, and extending themselves into the greater world, discovering that there is more of the same wonder and beauty to be found:

a secret bridge
slowly unfolds
from this world
to the next

Opening Reception:
Saturday, June 16th
6 – 10pm
Runs June 16 – July 15, 2012

Inquire for artwork availablity

SOUTHER SALAZAR
Souther Salazar received a BFA from the Art Center College of Art and Design in Pasadena, California. Salazar’s solo exhibitions include You Come Too, Jonathan Levine Gallery (NYC); Make It Real, GR2 (LA); and We Were Young and It Was Summer, GRNY (NYC). Recent group exhibitions include Juxtapoz Turns 18, Copro Gallery (LA), and Pattern Recognition, Subliminal Projects (LA).

THE TRADING TORTOISE PROJECT

Saturday June 16th, 1-3pm
Narwhal, 2988 Dundas ST West
Free to attend.

Join us for the inaugral launch of The Trading Tortoise , a mobile trading post created and run with Salazar and Monica Choy. The Trading Tortoise is, as the artist explains: “a year long, traveling, community-oriented art installation stopping in cities around North America to barter objects and stories with folks. Everyone is invited to bring an object, story or creation and exchange it for something else special we’ve found or traded for along the way. We hope to connect people in different places in America in this way, through a network of traded treasures, and through a mutual love of giving and receiving in a non-monetary exchange.”

While in Toronto, Salazar and Choy will activate The Trading Tortoise for local audiences as an invitation to create, barter, and interact. Every person has a unique object or story that only they can bring to this project. Each item recieved will be tagged with the person’s name, location, and a number and documented on our website so people can follow our trades and see where their item eventually traveled to. Follow the project here: thetradingtortoise.tumblr.com