Opening reception: Saturday, April 5, 1-3PM
In 1970, a large piece of raw canvas was hung outside the window of artist Tom Dean’s studio on Saint Laurent Boulevard in Montreal. Measuring 23 feet by 6 feet, the canvas bore gigantic lettering fashioned from glittering blue and gold sequins spelling “GOOD-BYE.” This intervention marked the artist’s very first public presentation—an address of farewell that launched an art career spanning over five decades, exceptional and still evolving. Boundless and expansive, fluidly transcending media, style, space, and norms, Dean’s work continues to challenge conventional categories of artistic production and meaning-making.
Driven by two essential inquiries—why “GOOD-BYE” then, and why Tom Dean now—the exhibition GOOD-BYE revisits the artist’s life in early 1970s Montreal. It brings together a rarely seen body of work—early conceptual artworks on canvas and in sculptural forms—and archival materials from that period, documenting the artist’s extensive and active engagement with the local alternative art scene and broader cultural milieu.
GOOD-BYE travels back in time to map and remap the vision and ambition projected by the artist at the time, while simultaneously standing in the present—behind the passage of history—to reevaluate and reflect on its significance in today’s context.
Tom Dean (b. 1947) is a conceptual artist, known for his work in a diverse range of media including sculpture, installation art, performance, drawing, and printmaking. Playing on tensions between the ordinary and mythical, his works reference both everyday objects and classical icons, alluding to the dream world of the psyche and matters of the soul, while always residing in the intensely material world of desire and the body. He received the Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts (2001), was selected to represent Canada at the 1999 Venice Biennale, and was honoured with the Toronto Arts Award for Visual Arts in 1996. His work can be found in major collections including the National Gallery of Canada, Art Gallery of Ontario, Musée d’Art Contemporain, and Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
Yan Wu is a curator, writer, and translator whose work explores the intersections of contemporary art, architecture, and the making of public space. She is currently the Public Art Curator for the City of Markham and is pursuing her PhD at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto. Wu has co-translated seminal books into Chinese, including Rosalind Krauss’s Passages in Modern Sculpture, Lucy Lippard’s Six Years, Dan Graham’s Rock My Religion, and Formless by Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss. Born and raised in Shanghai, she moved to Canada in 2001 and now lives in Toronto.
Leila Timmins is the Senior Curator at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery.