Spatial Configurations, a Particular Rhythm

ART LABOR Gallery is pleased to present Spatial Configurations, a Particular Rhythm, an exhibition of recent work by Canadian artist John Monteith which began eight years ago in his studio in Toronto and continued in residency at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai. For his first gallery exhibition in China, Monteith continues his exploration of architecturally based drawings and textiles realized through color and rhythmic form.

As a cross-disciplinary artist Monteith works across multiple mediums including photography, painting, drawing, textiles, curation, and collaborative initiatives. Informed by cities with diverse histories of built forms and their articulation of spatial dynamics and representational politics, his practice is informed by contemporary issues related to identity, community, architecture, urban fluidity, transformation, memory, and history.

Through his improvisational and organic drawing process Monteith engages with the spatial poetics of architectural form, transforming structures through his drawings into layered asymmetrical geometries that condense and distil the essence of their original structure. Beginning with an architectural representation, reduced to basic shape and form drawn on the back of a sheet of transparent drafting film Monteith responds to its spatial poetics by creating a second responsive drawing on the front, together these two layers create a third composite drawing, a “palimpsest.” As a mediation on place, space, and process Monteith’s drawings reveal their layered nature upon close inspection. In places, color bleeds through the layering as the craft and work of his hand begin to reveal themselves.

Building on this foundation of drawing, Monteith extends his exploration into fibre-based works, further engaging with the layered histories of material traditions. Through the integration of form and embedded text, his works trace connections between architectural abstraction and the often-overlooked practices of craft, highlighting their shared rhythm, labor, and expressive potential.

His title Spatial Configurations, a Particular Rhythm refers to the organization and re-organization of urban space, suggesting a flowing pattern and harmony within the spaces we inhabit and transform. The title alludes to movement, music and dance, reflecting the rhythmic ways we navigate through and around these spaces, while mirroring the improvisational method of Monteith’s approach to making his work.

Monteith has exhibited internationally at the Tate Modern, London, the Schinkel Pavilion, Berlin, X Initiative, New York, the Taipei Contemporary Art Center, Taipei, the DUMBO Art Center, New York, 7th Beijing Biennale, Beijing, and Sàn Art, Ho Chi Minh City.

He has held residencies at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai (2024), I Project Space, Beijing (2018), Kunsthalle Roveredo, Switzerland (2014), and CAT Cologne, Germany (2011).

Reviews and essays dedicated to his work have been included in Mousse Magazine, Canadian Art, Art in America (print and online), Charley, C Magazine, October, The Huffington Post, K-48, Petit Mort: Recollections of a Queer Public, the New Yorker and others.

Monteith has been awarded grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council. He currently lives and works in Toronto where he is a Sessional Lecturer at the University of Toronto, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design.

His work can be found in the following collections: the Canadian Embassy, Ankara, Tricon Residential, San Francisco, Toronto, Atlanta, Tampa, and Jacksonville, the Swatch Foundation, Shanghai, Majudia, Montreal, Bank of Montreal, Toronto, Scotiabank, Toronto, The New School, Manhattan, New York, Torys LLP, Toronto, TD Bank, Toronto, BNY Melon, New York.

Monteith would like to thank the Toronto Arts Council for their generous support of this exhibition.