With outsideinside, renowned multi-media artist Sergei Sviatchenko has created a monumental sculptural collage of Toronto’s legendary art community, know as West Queen West.

In the artist’s signature style, the piece is at once factual and fictional, at times amusing and unsettling, and ultimately mysterious. Mixing Sviatchenko’s snapshots of the area with images plundered from pop culture and stretching 16ft long, outsideinside offers different views from various angles, presenting the familiar in a surprisingly fresh new way.

The large-scale photographs that accompany the sculpture take the installation a couple of steps further. Presenting intimate snapshots of the piece much larger than life, inviting the viewer to question the subject matter and find one’s place within it – is it a disjointed shot of the street or a fragment of the sculpture?

However, the most interesting presentation of the work was at the reception to unveil the piece, attended by the Consul General for the Royal Danish Consulate, as well as curators, gallery directors and members of the media. All leaning over and around the piece, like giants in a post-modern doll house.
Certainly a piece that needs to be experienced in person to truly appreciate it’s subtlety and nuance.

“ Sergei Sviatchenko, one of the finest collage artists I have ever met.”

-Andy Simionato, Art Director This Is A Magazine, Milan, Italy.

text by Mia Nielsen, Curator at Drake

3d photo collage, 90×125 cm, limited edition: 1/3, Signed
Lambda kodak silver paper print