Osheen  Harruthoonyan

SAW  THE  SPLENDOUR

August 22 – September 15, 2013

Lonsdale Gallery presents new work by Toronto-based photographer Osheen Harruthoonyan. His solo exhibition, Saw the Splendour, is on view August 22 to September 15, 2013. Join Harruthoonyan at the reception on Thursday, August 22^nd, from 6 – 9 pm.

Osheen Harruthoonyan’s practice extends beyond photography; it relies heavily on staging, chemistry, collage, and printmaking techniques. In a laboratory-like wet darkroom, he manipulates the details in the surface of 4 x 5 inch negatives. His photographs are studio constructions, where layers of black and white emulsion are chemically lifted, sculpted and collaged by hand to alter the negative. In Saw the Splendour, he uses this technique to replicate the careful patterning of the building blocks of our world.

Harruthoonyan’s most recent series of abstracted black and white compositions bears an uncanny familiarity. Visually, the imagery oscillates between representations of the cosmos and microscopic views of activated molecules. Unified field theory lies at the core of Saw the Splendour; it illustrates wondrous parallels in the physical composition of our universe. This branch of the natural sciences explores how recurrent patterning in atomic structure causes the largest astral formation to mirror the smallest cellular structure. There is wonder be found in this simple, yet overarching organizational structure.

The photographs in Saw the Splendour are meticulous products of alternate-process photography. Harruthoonyan’s imagery masquerades as documentation of the natural world, yet fall somewhere between reality and a lucid dream. The exhibition title, Saw the Splendour, is a nod to this eerie and gorgeous sensation of knowing with unshakable certainty that the key to the mysteries of our universe is within reach, a tingling attainable energy which hovers at our fingertips.

Osheen Harruthoonyan is based in Toronto. Notable solo exhibitions include Black Garden,       B-Sides, Nocturna Artificialia and Uchronie Fragments. Black Garden was awarded a Featured Exhibition in the 2011 CONTACT Photography Festival, following on the heels of his Featured CONTACT shows in 2008 and 2009. Harruthoonyan’s photographs can be found in public and private collections internationally; they have been featured in the Globe and Mail, National Post, Toronto Star, and Ottawa’s Voir as well as in Canadian House and Home magazine.