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T H E B R A I N P R O J E C T 2 0 2 0
Michael Toke is a Toronto-based visual/installation
artist, born in Hamilton. After attending Sheridan
College and OCA in the 1980s, he moved
to NYC
and worked as head assistant to J.S.G.
Boggs,
a commerce-based performance artist. He has
exhibited internationally in art and film venues.
His
installations combine painting, photography,
video
and sculpture hung on a conceptual
armature
of documentary film practice. He teaches Advanced Painting, Abstraction,
Colour Theory and Film/Video at the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Electric Tears of the Poplars
Michael Toke
Artist Statement
Michael Toke's sculpture is rooted in a painting he made of an Alzheimer's
patient's brain image, called memory fragment (Transmutations, 2000), which
showed broken and disconnected axons and dendrites with found photos
emerging from them. The artist was compelled by this work, and wanted
to reconnect the synapses and know what they encoded; they were frozen
as if in amber. This new transparent resin work will, like amber, yellow with
exposure and time to become an artifact of memory. Toke hopes that
science and research will find an end to this disconnect so that people
may write their own stories.
