Dennis Myers: The Forest Dao

OUT/AUT Gallery of Modern Art

Dennis Myers, Are these not stars in their own…, Archival Giclée photograph, 20″ x 20″

The Forest Whispers…Photographs and Observations

October 25 – November 20, 2025
Opening Night: October 25, 7 – 9pm
OUT/AUT Gallery of Modern Art, Toronto
www.theforestdao.com

Sure, Craig, these are pictures of leaves, sparkling colour rendered eye-poppingly big. (20x20inches!) But also see them, all twenty of them, as snapshots of transition, a universe of change, in change. Or this is the wabi-sabi-meditative-impermanence brought to easy eyelevel, this autumn walk captured by accident, rendered by the camera’s quick imagination. Leaves, yes, but take a second look at the gift of a moment, marked in explosions of reds, yellows, past greens, specks of pure white, and an array of browns. So, these are pictures of leaves, portraits of colour, elusive evocations of the dao.

Along the path, each image posits a question or two. Do you remember the family trip to the forest in bloom? Is the dead leaf actually dead to the soil? Can you see the universe in a moment of still transition, looking through the surface to depths beyond? Yeah, it really does ask that question too.

Dennis Myers, I get roses—the thorny bastards…, Archival Giclée photograph, 20″ x 20″

Are these leaves really meditations on transience and perception, you ask?

Yes, but don’t take my word for it, Craig. Here’s what ChatGPT (who has not seen the show) has to say about it: “What started as a stroll through autumn detritus becomes—through Myers’s multifaceted lens—a quiet reckoning with time, language, and the urge to name the unnameable. The Forest Dao is both playful and philosophical—a gallery of color, wit, and reverent wonder.”

About the Artist

Dennis Myers lives with his wife Judy in a Manhattan rooftop garden filled with great biodiversity, but no fallen leaves of strong colours other than awkward green and rusty brown. He is a photographer, filmmaker, and writer, with an idea and an exploration of how the personal manifests itself in the stories we tell ourselves. OUT/AUT Gallery of Modern Art previously presented his show Nogales: On the Edge of the Invisible, photography from, of, and in the heart of the Mexican border town. You can tourist those images here.

His film This is What America Looks Like (filmed over two incredible days, the first Trump inauguration and the next day’s Women’s March) was featured in the Cinema on the Edge festival in Santa Barbara. In addition to his two indescribable novels (Coyote and The Corn Standard (described by Kirkus review as “an ambitious, quick satire that offers a mixed bag of the cynical and the odd”)) available as ebooks on (ugh) Amazon, Myers has been published in an array of journals, including the Secret Surrealist Society, Spindrift, 34th Parallel, and tsuri-dōrō.

He is also a frequent contributor to First of the Month, the cutting-edge outlet for radical liberal thinking. Check out his essay on the relevance of Victor Klemperer’s The Language of the Third Reich and its echoes in the language of Trump: I Know Words. I Have the Best Words. Stupid.

You can explore all this and more on his personal website Ignoreadvice.com.

Dennis Myers, Carl von Linné began naming everything…, Archival Giclée photograph, 20″ x 20″

Land Acknowledgement
These photographs were accomplished in the traditional lands of the Seneca, Lenape, and Shawnee peoples. We tread lightly with respect and heavy with history.

OUT/AUT
823C St Clair Ave West
Toronto, ON M6C 1B9
artalternative@gmail.com
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Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 12 – 6pm or by appointment

Accessibility: Unfortunately, the gallery has a few steps down to enter.

Photographic Printing by:
William Oldacre of Fine Art Print Studio
910 Queen Street West, Studio B2
Toronto, ON M6J 1G6
416-405-9929
www.fineartprintstudio.com

Image Descriptions:
1. Universes hide in there. Look closely. Are these not stars in their own systems, with these white dots of decay?
2. I get roses—the thorny bastards—all tangled intertwining, but crowned in the colours of forgiveness. Leaves—in their quiet collective solitude—confuse me.
3. Following in Adam’s footsteps, starting in 1735, Carl von Linné began naming everything in sight, tagging all of nature.