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Jul 12, 2023

Rhythm of a True Space #2

Learn the history behind the 11-panel archival pigment print by Toronto-based artist Suzy Lake.

Suzy Lake. Rhythm of a True Space #2 (detail), 2008 - 2009. Archival pigment prints on canvas, Overall: 214.6 × 810.3 cm. (11 panels: 3 panels: 214.6 x 134.6 cm; 8 panels: 214.6 x 50.8 cm). Art Gallery of Ontario. Gift of Suzy Lake and Robert Yoshioka, 2022. © Suzy Lake. Photo AGO. 2022/31

“I wanted the sense of the rhythm of sweeping, not the figure, to become strong enough that the audience would feel it,” said artist Suzy Lake on her work Rhythm of a True Space #2 (2008-2009). An 11-panel archival pigment print that features Lake gently sweeping rubble on the ground, the work seemingly follows the viewer’s steps as you walk alongside it. For this month’s RBC Art Pick, we dive into the past of the work. It is currently on view at the AGO as part of the exhibition Her Space, which features works representing the interior lives of women – at rest, at work, at play or in a dream state.

Using photographs taken more than 15 years ago, Rhythm of a True Space #2 belonged to an image-based series Lake began to work with in 1994 titled Re-Reading Recovery (1996). The archival photos showed her sweeping the rubble at the site of a home renovation. Dressed in a thin cotton slip, Lake appears resolute but vulnerable and barefoot. During that time, Lake was particularly interested in exploring the concepts of beauty and the aging body. Lake has said, “Experience is positive; maturity is positive; but our culture doesn’t celebrate these attributes when associated with aging.”

An image-maker who interrogates ideas of beauty, aging and self, Lake has long been exploring and analyzing themes of the body, gender and identity since the late 1960s. Best known for her development of photo-based performance feminist aesthetics, she was born in Michigan and is now based in Toronto. Her 1978 exhibition was her first solo show at an art museum. Her 2014 AGO retrospective, Introducing Suzy Lake, charted her career across five decades, examining how Lake’s ideas and practice developed since the late 1960s through the lens of three cities: Detroit, Montreal and Toronto.

AGO Hoarding Installation, Introducing Suzy Lake, November 5, 2014 – March 22, 2015. Art Gallery of Ontario. Work shown: Suzy Lake, Rhythm of a True Space #1, 2008. © Suzy Lake. Photo AGO.

Those who witnessed Transformation AGO in 2008, the expansion project, may already be familiar with this work. Lake was invited by Sophie Hackett, AGO Curator, Photography, to imagine a project for the street hoarding outside the AGO, right by the McCaul Street entrance. The artist used the original 1994 sweeping images to create a series of eight-foot-high composite panels, repeating the figure and working with her shadow in the intervals in which she is not present. Titled Rhythm of a True Space, the 56-foot-long installation wrapped around the corner of the hoarding, adorning the protective walls around Henry Moore’s Large Two Forms (1966-1969), during the duration of the AGO building renovation.

Fast forward to 2008, Lake made a second version of this landmark piece and titled it Rhythm of a True Space #2. She printed 11 panels of the archival pigment print on stretched canvas and designed them to be on a wall. Changing the sequence of images from projects past, this version emphasizes more on the panels where the woman is absent and only hints of her shadow are noticed. This large piece joins the AGO Collection, building upon the Gallery’s existing significant collection of Lake’s works.

Installation of Rhythm of a True Space #2 at the AGO

Suzy Lake. Rhythm of a True Space #2, 2008 - 2009. Archival pigment prints on canvas, Overall: 214.6 × 810.3 cm. (11 panels: 3 panels: 214.6 x 134.6 cm; 8 panels: 214.6 x 50.8 cm). Art Gallery of Ontario. Gift of Suzy Lake and Robert Yoshioka, 2022. © Suzy Lake. Photo AGO. 2022/31

Rhythm of a True Space #2 is on view now as part of Her Space on Level 2 of the AGO in the R. Samuel McLaughlin Gallery and the Joan & Jerry Lozinski Gallery (galleries 201 and 247) from April 1, 2023 through early January 2024.

Rhythm of a True Space #2

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