Jon Sasaki: Homage is a suite of photographs depicting petri dishes with bloomed bacterial cultures derived from swabs of the palettes and brushes used by members of the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson, objects held in the archives of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. These large-scale works are monumental in scale yet they reveal microscopic detail, affirming a playful reverence towards the Group's legacy while reframing the genre of landscape painting through the lens of photography. Through these glowing bacterial landscapes Sasaki has generated a new sublime, a counterpoint to the quotidian nature of what lies beneath. The artifacts from which the microscopic organisms were gathered will be exhibited in dialogue with the photographs, presenting a poignant entanglement of past and present-day artists in the story of Canadian art.
Llisten to a conversation between Jon Sasaki and Chief Curator of The McMichael Sarah Milroy HERE
