“Soft Abs” is an exhibition of abstract painting, and its title is meant to give a slightly humorous spin on the nature by which abstraction defies definition and evades the hard-bodied hyper-realism of much contemporary and mostly computer-generated imagery.

Full Colour Hype is a 'retrospective' of work produced by Kingston, ON designer/screenprinter Benjamin Nelson. The exhibition will feature silkscreen concert posters, art prints, drawing collaborations, handmade books and other printed junk on paper from 2003-2008.

“We live in an age of surfaces. Oscar Wilde’s character made this remark over a century ago, but for UW fine arts professor Robert Linsley, nothing could be truer of our own time--and nothing more compelling to study.” – Angela Roorda, University of Waterloo

For its seventh year of programming, Kingston’s unique festival of adventurous sound performance, TONE DEAF, will highlight the importance of smaller labels which promote the work of experimental composer-performers, sound artists and noisicians within Canada.

The new exhibition “Forest Station” will allow Modern Fuel visitors to take an International art tour without leaving Kingston. The work of both artists exhibiting, Yvette Poorter and David Ross, reflects their wandering ways and their worldliness. The work in this exhibition is linked through the humorous and poetic use of the forest as a location for a creative wonderland.

KNOCK ON WOODS RESIDENCIES
Anna Elmberg-Wright, Lisa Figge, Sandra Jass, Bruce Kauffman, Rebecca Soudant.

Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre presents a free weekend of performance, video and community action with the internationally acclaimed Cuban artist Rene Francisco Rodriguez.

From the 9th to the 13th of September, Knock on Woods will be situated at the Artel in Kingston, Ontario. Knock on Woods International Residency and Dwelling for Intervals is a constructed space that dedicates itself to offering local and international artists a sense of rootedness and respite from a hectic and bewildering globalism. The residency is a para-site that consists of a rustic tent-cabin and a forest of tree-flags that can be and has been situated almost anywhere.

Infra-Ordinary presents the work of Christine D’Onofrio (Vancouver, BC), Toni Hafkenscheid (Toronto, ON), Dave Kemp (Toronto, ON) with Kevin Robbie (Kinston, ON), Preston Schiedel (Kingston, ON), and Collin Zipp (Winnipeg, MB).

With Static, S.J. Coates (Kingston, ON) has created a series of images that combine photographs (rescued from their oblivion in his archives of negatives) with the digital images he takes with the tools he uses today.

Modern Fuel and Downtown Kingston present:

SQUARE PEGS: Video Art in the Square

On Saturday August 2nd, from 12 noon to 5pm, at Springer Market Square, Dave Kemp will present Taken, a camera obscura within a van. Climb inside a camera and see the world in a whole new way!

Friday July 25
Cities Turn to Sand || Fighter/Lover

Saturday July 26
TimKnightUs: A Space Odyssey

Lynne Wynick writes: "My work propels itself through various media bouncing ideas back and forth, in a practice where the studio process and resultant detritus are embraced. Through investigations of location and scale, in allowing for the unexpected and utilizing the unintentional, I create a situation that is ripe for engagement and interpretation. The work intentionally confounds the perception of scale for the viewer through an ambiguous or skewed context.

For Modern Fuel’s 10th Regional Juried Exhibition, Throwing Tomatoes at the Sky, guest curator Camilla Singh has chosen works by nine Kingston-based artists: James Greatrex, Dorene Inglis, Troy Leaman, Benjamin Nelson, Aly Ogasian, Gjen Snider, Rebecca Soudant, Amy Uyeda, and Rafaela Vidinha. Modern Fuel’s regional juried exhibitions are meant to reflect the wide-ranging practices of artists in the Greater Kingston region and to provide a forum in which to compare artistic modalities from one year to the next.

With we know where we are, the artists Julia Mensink, and Lisa Visser, examine the nature of their own artistic relationships, both personal and professional, so that their collaboration becomes a microcosm that offers a perspective on other processes of collaboration.

In One Dimensional Space, Modern Fuel presents the work of four artists, Melanie MacDonald (St. Catharines, ON), Leigh Mayoh (Ymir, BC), June Pak (Toronto, ON), and Kathleen Ritter and James B. Maxwell (Vancouver, BC), offering the promise of other dimensions.

On 7 June 2008, performance artist Adrian Stimson’s alter-ego Buffalo Boy, in collaboration with curator Ryan Rice and Modern Fuel, rode tall on Modern Fuel’s float in Kingston’s gay pride parade, celebrating art and commemorating the struggle for equal rights and pride.

This exhibition features the work of Boja Vasic and Vessna Perunovich. It is a visual survey that examines the social phenomena surrounding what the artists call "forced nomads."

Nathan McNinch writes: "All we leave behind was originally conceived of as the sequel to a project I have been working on since 2004, even in a crowd, i was always alone. This was originally intended to be single project which examined both the physical and mental or perhaps philosophical nature of human need for interaction and companionship, manifested in a series of recordings documenting the physical properties of the human voice--verbal communication being the most common form of communication--and recordings made in communal spaces. While developing even in a crowd...