Event Details
WHEN I GO DEAF
Solo art exhibition by Rebecca Fin Simonetti
Music Gallery — Fellowship Room
Open during concert hours, March 1 to April 30, 2010
Opening reception:
Saturday March 13, 6-8pm
Featuring a performance by Wet Nurse (Rebecca Fin Simonetti and Alexandra MacKenzie of Romo Roto) + zine launch for Legend of the Black Tube
About the exhibition
Toronto painter Rebecca Fin Simonetti’s work is located in a culture in which hallucinogenic images of beautiful women have an overwhelming presence. She uses sound as a metaphor for understanding the effect of these images on perception. Like a song that you find yourself humming along to but can't identify, these images get stuck in our heads. Atmospheric noise does not require an active viewer; it enters the ears of anyone within its vicinity, invisibly transmitting information. From digital interfaces to billboards, images of dominant femininity have integrated seamlessly into our perspectival reality — becoming a sort of semiotic white noise.
Within this cultural context, Simonetti explores the psychology of my subjects, specifically around experiences of mental illness, psychedelia, euphoria and trauma. As a framework for understanding these altered states, the artist compares the experience of listening to music through headphones — during which, even in shared physical space, our internal perception of reality is invisibly modified. Carl Jung argued that our psyche “transforms and falsifies” reality, and that “we cannot penetrate to the essence of things external to ourselves... our knowledge is conditioned by the psyche which, because it alone is immediate, is superlatively real.” In her paintings, Simonetti hopes to make visible the tension between the internal music of our personal phenomenology, and the atmospheric “white noise” of visual culture.
Artist bio
Rebecca Fin Simonetti was born in Toronto and raised in Vancouver. After receiving widespread recognition for her early film works, including Best Drama at the Burbank International Film Festival, she moved to Toronto to attend York University's Film Production program. After two years at York, she transferred to OCAD to complete a BFA in Drawing and Painting last spring. As one half of Wet Nurse and a member of Blues, Fin is an also active musician. In 2008, she released Violet Ray, a full-length solo album. Currently, she lives and works in Toronto. Despite keeping a multi-disciplinary practice, painting is the centre of Fin’s work.
