Bjoerling's Larynx: World Famous Opera Houses (Reposted from JRN504 WordPress)

David Leventi currently has a photographic exhibition, titled Bjoerling's Larynx: World Famous Opera Houses, showing at Beau XI gallery. The collection is named after a famous Swedish operatic tenor, Jussi Bjoerling, who has been called the best singer of the century.



The pieces featured are large-scale photographs of famous opera houses from different cities across the globe, taken between 2007 and 2010.

Each photo is taken from the spot at centre stage where a performer would stand, leaving symmetrical spaces on both sides. The photographs are huge, almost mural sized, and they hang on the wall at perfect eye-level. When you stand directly in front of the photo, you feels as if you were surrounded by the building. You are swallowed up by it.

As Leventi writes in his artist statement, the photos “freeze for eternity the instant before a performance takes place.” The photos are meticulous. Yes, they are architectural spaces, but they are also portraits that show the history and wealth of a country.



“I experience an almost religious feeling walking into a grand space such as an opera house,” Leventi writes. And looking at these photos does give me a sense of awe. One of the larger photos, Teatro La Fenice in Venice, makes me feel as if I am standing in the opera house. It is, in a way, intimidating.

The spaces vary in colour, most of them with plush red velvet and elaborate gold woodwork, but a couple are decorated in cool white marble or blue painted walls.

Some famous buildings included in the collections are the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the Theatre Olimpico in Vicenza, Italy, plus many more elegant opera houses.



The show runs until the end of February at Beau XI gallery, 340 Dundas St. West.

Public art as a public service

Jason Shelowitz, a graphic designer and artist from New York, has started a public art campaign that draws attention to people's bad manners and horrible etiquette on the New York subway system.
He has created a series of posters that look like official transit posters and he has posted them around the New York subway lines.
The posters' messages are about anything from people clipping their nails or eating messy food to playing loud music or simply littering while riding public transit.
"The messages are barbed and to the point," writes Debra Black in today's Toronto Star article about Shelowitz's art campaign.
Check out an image gallery of Shelowitz's posters here.


I wish a public art campaign of that nature could happen here.
It's really terrifying the amount of gross and ill-mannered things I see people do- smoking on the subway train, clipping fingernails on the streetcar and leaving piles of garbage under seats.

I don't treat the system like crap because I don't want it to look like crap. Yes, people are employed to clean up the streetcars, trains and buses. But that doesn't mean I want it to look and feel like a garbage dump before they get a chance to do their job.

It's really disgusting how people will treat their surroundings when they think that someone else will clean up after them.


Photo Credit: Toronto Star Article