dArt International Magazine

by Chunbum Park

Joan Bofill, a Spanish visual artist and filmmaker, engages with a mode of portraiture which he calls “Double Portrait,” to capture a meaningful trace and record of his encounters with distinguished figures. At the Angel Orensanz Foundation’s gothic synagogue, Bofill’s exhibition, “Double Portrait: Paintings In Conversation” (October 16-17), takes place in collaboration with (Director) Sozita Goudouna’s The Opening Gallery. The Angel Orensanz Foundation for the Arts, established 1992 in New York City, is an artistic and cultural space/institution open to artists, writers, thinkers and leaders, including Philip Glass and Spike Lee; Arthur Miller, Alexander McQueen, Salman Rushdie, Maya Angelou and Alexander Borovsky; Elie Wiesel and Chuck Close. The current show brings together both large-scale paintings and the smaller “Double Portraits.” The “Double Portrait” project specifically involves both the filming of the encounter or interview and the artist’s drawing/painting of the figure with India ink and graphite. The series emerged from his documentary work, particularly his film about Hollywood producer Stuart Cornfeld (premiering at AFI Festival October 23). While conducting interviews for that film, Bofill began drawing his subjects simultaneously—a practice that evolved into something more deliberate.

“Double Portrait” is a synthetic process with dialogue based on mutual trust and the dynamic interplay of personalities – the artist’s and the interviewee’s. The artist envisions the “Double Portrait” as a principled endeavor – one that refuses to exploit or use people for their fame and which happens naturally and organically through a web or network of human connections. Throughout the continuation of this practice, Stuart Cornfield might introduce another filmmaker like David Lynch to the artist purely out of delight for the conversation that the artist engaged in with the person. 

The manner in which Bofill tunes into the conversation with the figures with an observant, creative, and informed mind gains the trust of the interviewees, which allows them to open up to the artist to create together a playful and friendly synthesis of ideas, not necessarily as thesis and antithesis, but as intuition embracing intuitions, and experience empathizing with experience.

All the information garnered by the artist feeds into the artist’s psyche in interpreting and digesting the subject’s persona and history, which contributes to the final image through the subconscious. 

Being heavily influenced by Surrealism, of which Spanish painters Salvador Dali and Joan Miro were key figures, the artist’s visual renderings of the subjects traverse the territories of the transient, ephemeral, spectral, and angelic. A uniquely different kind of visual qualia or style can be detected in this kind of work from the artist’s usual repertoire of figurative and abstract painting. It should be humbly assessed that Bofill’s most successful and consistent body of work to date is the “Double Portrait” not because of its ambitious and large scale but because of its narrowed down scope, clarity of purpose and originality of vision, and its historical and cultural significance in dealing with iconic figures.

The paper on which the “Double Portrait” is executed takes on a special meaning or significance because the artist often rips out a page from an old art history book or monograph without the image or the slide of the artwork, which the artist purposefully removes, leaving a blank white space for the drawing and painting. This act is akin to the making of a palimpsest, in which the artist recognizes the historical significance of the continuity of tradition, lineage, and canon over long centuries and millennia. The artist appears to suggest, in engaging with figures from the Spanish-speaking domains, the American mainstream, and African and Caribbean origins, that the “Western” history and culture has evolved into a global union of people and ideas and not strictly limited to the history and the cultures of people with a European ancestry. What remains is no longer purely Western people and society but a globalized cultural network of institutions, ideas, trade, and encounters.

A clear distinction can be observed between Bofill and the other “artists” in the streets chasing after famous people: Bofill approaches the “Double Portrait” project with sincerity and lucidity, with the goal of earning the trust of the other by maintaining his own artistic integrity and sensitivity. There is no wax or fluff in Bofill’s work; it is neither over nor underworked; it is made just about right, which is very difficult to achieve for many artists who may overshoot or undershoot from the most ideal outcome. The accidents are no longer accidents but serve as the patterns of an organic and creative process based on discovery and an earnest investigation (for the truth of what they may discuss). While Bofill may not be Picasso just yet, he is a young master in his own rights. 

Through repetition of the “Double Portrait,” Bofill slowly accumulates the structure and the voice of his unique style, which is ghostly or angelic at times, traversing into the spiritual and the metaphysical territories, perhaps because the artist is acutely aware of the passage of time and our own mortality.

Why “Double Portrait”? What is the effect of assigning a QR code to each drawing or painting, which leads to a video interview of the person depicted in the artwork? 

The answers may be obvious, but the truth requires a great deal of thought and effort to be properly excavated. The video interview may capture in real time the various facial expressions, the speech patterns, the voice, and gestures and the manners of the person. The video may be the shadow of the object, which is the drawn portrait, or it may be the object itself, with the shadow being the drawn portrait. Sometimes, the video may contain more information than the drawing or painting itself.

But art is the process or the act of curation of information. In photography, it is the cropping of the subject, filtering out the unnecessary details or noise. Similarly, the video component of the “Double Portrait” serves to provide context for the framed information and to create an ecosystem of ideas and meaning, of which only a small amount makes it into the visual rendering like the tip of the iceberg.

But, really, art should transcend this kind of curation and accumulation of information, going beyond to capture something invisible and essential, which can never be found in the recorded video of the interview.

And this is where the true test for the artist lies. Even when the artist could not communicate properly with the subject, due to the limitations or differences of language, the artist connected with the subject. And this shows in the paintings. The artist allows the subject to subconsciously alter the internal state of the artist’s own being, which makes Double Portrait in essence an interactive and collaborative project. 

“Double Portrait” is not just the words or the act of sitting down and conversing with one another, but it is the intermingling of personalities, the interaction of personal energies, and the interconnection and trust between the two – the observer and the subject. The subject opens up to the observer (who is the artist) because the observer opens up to the subject with great sincerity; the observer/artist also allows the subject to enter into the observer/artist’s psyche, just as the observer/artist is doing the same to read into the subject’s own feelings, lived experiences, and ideological stance. And what results is that the artist’s hand serves as the subject’s hand, on a psychological or subconscious level, which is consistent with the Surrealist and even Dadaist (which evolved from the Surrealist) practice and philosophy. In effect, the observer is observed, and the observed, observing.

Bofill’s portrait of David Lynch is filled with sparks of light (which metaphorically becomes the spark of ideas) that penetrate into the shadows of his face. His strong and determined depiction of Angel Orensanz keeps his identity and ideological persona as a revolutionary and advocate for the advancement of art and culture. 

In conclusion, the artist achieves something greater than the sum of its parts for the “Double Portrait” project, by the very nature of its limited focus and artistic philosophy and sensitivity that reflects highly of the artist’s own fine-tuned and intellectual nature. Bofill approaches the subject not as an object of portraiture but as a subjecthood for empathy and human connection, and this is what makes the people respond to and engage so brilliantly and meaningfully with the project.

by Roy Bernardi

Joanne Tod (b. 1953) is a renowned Canadian artist whose painting invites a deeper contemplation of the complex interplay between subject and form. Her meticulous technique and choice of color evoke a serious examination of the themes she explores. Each piece serves not merely as an aesthetic object but as a commentary on contemporary issues, urging the viewer to engage thoughtfully with the visual narrative presented. The strength of her work lies in its ability to resonate on multiple levels, blending personal expression with broader societal reflections. As Tod continues to push the boundaries of her artistic practice, her contributions to the art world remain significant and profound.

Tod has become recognized and acclaimed in the contemporary art scene for her figurative artworks derived from photographs, employing irony to confront stereotypes, reveal vulnerabilities, and disturb preconceived notions regarding women, race, and social status. Few artists depict the complexities of the female experience as skillfully as Canadian artist Joanne Tod. She employs her expertise to amaze audiences by juxtaposing female subjects with meticulously crafted representational images. Tod was one of the trailblazing female artists to tackle women’s issues long before society recognized their significance in the 1970s. Her work is remarkably powerful, and her talent is undeniable. What she does is choose the images that are staples of visual culture and then, by a very subtle twist, manipulates the context of the image. In Tod’s practice, the use of irony serves as a means to reframe what we see, and to draw attention to the things people do and the society in which they exist.

Her work currently on view at Caviar 20, located at 647 Dupont Street, Toronto, will run until November 29, 2025. This must-see show serves as a mini retrospective, highlighting works from various stages of her career. It includes an early piece titled “In the Kitchen” from 1975, created with acrylic on canvas, as well as a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II titled “Queens” from 1996, rendered in oil on canvas. Other notable works featured are “Morning at the MET” from 2007, also an oil on canvas, alongside more recent pieces such as “Beaver Snail” and “La Banque,” both from 2025 and executed in oil on canvas. Additionally, several smaller works like “5 O’Clock EST” from 2025, created with watercolour on paper, are included in the exhibition.

Tod is regarded as one of Canada’s leading portrait artists, a master of figurative painting, capturing the prominent figures of the nation. Her style, characterized by vibrant brush strokes and a soft palette, is immediately identifiable. Few artists have the capability to showcase the finest attributes of their subjects as proficiently as Tod does.

Tod, has enjoyed a career that few artists could ever aspire to. Her creations are cherished in every major museum across Canada, including the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, and the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal to name a few.        

Joanne Tod is the only living artist remaining with us whose works are included in the book “Masterpieces of Canadian Art From The National Gallery Of Canada”; David Burnett, Published by Hurtig Publishers, Edmonton, Alberta, 1990.

by Dr. Thalia Vrachopoulos

In Hyun-Young Oh’s Barcode Landscape: Landscapes of a Coded World 2025, the notion of identity undergoes a radical reconfiguration through the reductive logic of quantification. Drawing from Byung-Chul Han’s critique of the “datafication” of existence — where the self, culture and even nature is rendered as transparent, calculable and performative — Oh’s digitalised East Asian landscapes of multitudinous barcodes, QR codes and Bitcoin motifs function as contemporary vistas of a quantified cosmos. The formative identity of subjects within today’s electronically-mediated society — what Han calls the digital totality — which is no longer constituted through an imaginal proliferation of mythical metaphors, but through digitized codes, results into a homogenizing datafication of reality, in which the mythical opacity that forms identity is erased. Every mythical image is reduced into an algorithmic code; and every poetic idea collapses into an abstract equation.

Hyun-Young Oh vividly renders these cataclysmic shifts of electronic devouring through the intricate use of traditional Korean iconography. For instance, the cosmogonic mountain ridges of The Painting of the Sun, Moon and Five Peaks or the Irworobongdo — a dynastic symbol of the Joseon royal court — are reframed here as a digital womb of decontextualized codes, while the winding rivers, towering peaks and spectral moons of the sansuhwa painting style are translated into infinitesimal grids of information. These digitalised landscapes of randomised inventory codes and infinite-spawning quick response codes no longer anchor any type of cultural belonging; they become anonymous data, circulating freely across endless, circulating networks.

From within these hyper-networked mountains and the glow of electronic moonlight, compact masses of anonymous metropolises ascend like shattered fragments of a global motherboard all the way up to the fragmented sky; an architectural foreshadowing of digital chaos, before it is compressed into the lucid flatness of the screen held in the palm of the hand. In this digital fever-dream any regional identity deteriorates into global anonymity.

In this way, Hyun-Young Oh reveals that identity, that ceases to be national, territorial or genealogical and becomes something automatically generated, decoded and recoded through an endless digital circulation like an ouroboric feedback loop. For Marshall McLuhan, each medium reshapes the human sensorium and creates collective identity; the typewriter and print culture of the Renaissance undergirded the formation of national consciousness through linear and sequential thought. In contrast, digital media engender an international simultaneity. An engulfing “global village” that dissolves borders and hierarchies, replacing narrative continuity with networked multiplicity. But Oh’s iridescent landscapes of digital identifiers and ever-generating bitcoins neither lament nor celebrate this unparalleled transformation, but instead they delve into its paradox. The analogue gestures of gentle brushwork dreamily merge with the convoluted geometry of digital computation. 


Traditional Korean iconography is not here to be read as a nostalgic ruin or a reactionary remnant of the past; rather, it functions as a recurring leitmotif of a newly emerged digital cosmology. The system-generated cipher codes and reprogrammed QR patterns do not hopelessly liquidate these enchanted panoramas of mystical mountaintops —such as the primordial Mount T’aebaek of Korean mythology — but they re-translate them into new contemporary idiom of today’s hyper-technological culture; tradition, once confined to charred horizontal boundaries on a two-dimensional plane, is now refracted through these mainframe codes of digital cryptocurrencies and scanning e-images into a mobile and vertical circuit that traverses the entire inhabited world with inexhaustible bandwidth. 

 In Oh’s fluorescent canvases, identity is no longer a static essence but a continuously updating system; a cultural algorithm that retains traces of history even as it generates new mythical topographies. In encoding traditional Korean painting into the circuitry of the digital, Hyun-Young Oh profoundly succeeds in reforming a hybrid interface, merging thus the abysmal gulf of tradition and digitality.

by Roy Bernardi and Jennifer Leskiw

In the contemporary art scene, few artists encapsulate the complexities of human experience as effectively as Canadian artist Katie Pretti. Born in 1980, she graduated with honours from the Ontario College of Art and Design in 2004 and obtained her Masters in Contemporary Art History in 2023. She is currently based in downtown Toronto, Ontario. Her creations may be regarded as entirely non-objective abstraction infused with conceivable figurative elements. Her artwork challenges viewers to engage in a dialogue between the recognizable and the abstract.

Pretti’s art often creates a nuanced interplay where the figure is obscured or rendered in such a way that it becomes part of the surrounding abstraction. In some works, the forms are distinctly recognizable, while in others, they dissolve into a tapestry of colour and texture, demanding the observer to ponder the relationship between representation and abstraction. This duality not only showcases her versatility as an artist but also reflects the complexity of human perception.

Through her art, Pretti invites us to explore the boundaries of abstraction and figurative representation. Each stroke and hue is deliberate, inviting the viewer to engage with the emotional resonance behind the images. Her unique approach encourages a deeper understanding of not only the figures portrayed but also the layers of meaning that lie beneath the surface. As her style evolves, the boundaries of abstraction are challenged.  

Katie Pretti remains a pivotal figure in the art community, inspiring both admiration and contemplation among art lovers and critics alike. Her work is a testament to the power of art to evoke thought and reflection, transcending the simple act of viewing to become an immersive experience. Pretti’s contributions to the art world are not merely aesthetic; they are profound explorations of the human condition presented through a lens of abstract interpretation. As her career unfolds, followers of her work can anticipate the limitless potential of her creative journey.  

Pretti’s new works are a series of 12 pieces loosely based on the Vanitas trope, which is a theme from northern European paintings of the Baroque period. This theme is a reminder of life’s fragility, the transient nature of youth, and the inevitability of death. Also, most specifically, it’s a condemnation of vain pursuits. (The addition of which distinguishes this theme from the closely related memento mori paintings of the same era.) Traditionally conveyed through the depiction of a realistic still life, a Vanitas painting features an arrangement of objects which each illustrate an aspect of the moral. For instance, a skull is used to symbolize death; a burning candle, bubble, or hourglass signifies transience; decaying fruit or flowers represent decay; mirrors reference vanity.

This theme holds additional importance for Pretti. It represents a return to a collection of Vanitas themed paintings she created in 2010, which was a crucial series in her career. It was designed as a series of 10 pieces to work together similarly to Claude Monet’s Waterlilies, allowing viewers to observe the transition of light from day to night in the backgrounds of the compositions, which essentially featured figures set within landscapes. Vanitas No. 10 features “imagined figures contorting within a foreboding landscape during the transition from day to night… these imagined abstracted figures are attempting, in vain, to resist the arrival of darkness. The onset of darkness is inevitable”. This piece, from Pretti’s initial Vanitas series, serves as inspiration for the current work.  

When Pretti first approached the Vanitas theme in 2010, the entire notion of death’s inevitability was merely an abstract idea to her; she could only intellectualize it. However, after experiencing her own encounter with death, her perception of the theme of Vanities transformed. This led her to truly grasp the sensation of fragility. That experience profoundly motivated Pretti to apply to the Ontario Arts Council to explore the Vanities theme once more. Now, 15 years later, equipped with a genuine understanding of the fear of death, she is reassessing her interpretation of Vanitas, but this time with a darker and bolder perspective. She is not particularly inclined to include a “beautiful” landscape element in her work this time. In her own words, “I am really leaning into colour and playing with composition and, of course, abstracted figures to create imagery that will express slight discomfort, maybe some anxiety, and certainly moments of fear. That’s not to say that this is gonna be a completely unpalatable, dark, unapproachable body of work. Some panels are going to present as bright and some as dark, but all will be dynamic compositions using bold colour. And the pallet does shift incrementally over the panels creating a cyclic sense to the series.” Pretti is trying to translate a narrative into abstract elements that ask the viewer to use their intuition to interpret. This would define her general method of abstraction, indeed. You imagine that you are observing a figure, yet you understand it is not a representation of a figure.

Some of her work could be considered non-objective abstraction while some could be considered figurative abstraction. According to Pretti, Daemons No. 3 could be interpreted as one’s inner demons being so persistent that they’ve materialized into reality, like the daemon figure is emerging from a dark realm, pushing forward in space, toward the viewer, toward reality … it’s a scary painting lol.

Corpus Hypercubus and Mudang paintings were obtained directly from the artist’s studio during a private visit. They exemplify what Pretti describes as “in-between” works that “are hugely informative of future work.” Corpus Hypercubus distinctly displays elements of both landscape and figure, and, most significantly, it showcases media and colour experimentation that appear in later works. The term mudang, a female shaman who communicates with the supernatural through dance rituals, resulted in the creation of the Mudang painting. The stripes of colour in the black ground foreshadow key pieces Pretti has exhibited since. 

Beside Myself 1 is a current abstract expressionist painting. The expression ‘beside myself’ can be understood as a complex, multi-faceted, and evolving imagery, literally merging into one another. Additionally, it may convey feelings of intense frustration and exasperation, or evoke a sense of gut-wrenching dread or regret.

Pretti’s artistic endeavours are most aptly likened to those of British artist Cecily Brown (1969-), as both artists deconstruct the form of the human image, merging it into abstraction. However, the artists from whom Pretti draws inspiration include Edvard Munch (1863-1944) (especially his woodcuts), classical old masters such as Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770) and Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), as well as the Abstract Expressionists Mark Rothko (1903-1970), Robert Motherwell (1915-1991), and Willem de Kooning (1904-1997)… 

Pretti currently has work on view at The Modern, Toronto – Niagara Inaugural group exhibition (230 Niagara Street, Toronto) on view now through to January 2026 alongside works by Ben Woolfitt, Francoise Sullivan, Mark Roth, Andre Fauteux, Cora Cluett, Judy Singer, William Griffiths and Sandy Van Iderstine. 

Pretti has held studios in Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, and Brooklyn, and has been artist in residence at COME (Buenos Aires), Ctrllab (Montreal), The White House (Toronto), and Spark Box Studios (Picton, Ontario). Her book of drawings, Sonority of Words, was launched in Toronto by Art Metropole. It was featured at the 2007 NYC Art Book Fair, and added to the Artists Books Library at the National Gallery of Canada. Pretti has also been profiled in Carte Blanche Volume 2: Painting, ArtSync, ArtSlant, Magenta Magazine Online, Elle Canada, Fashion Magazine, Canadian House and Home, and Inside Entertainment, among others.