Jon Sasaki at School of Art Gallery, University of Manitoba

Jon Sasaki, Microbes Swabbed from a Palette Used by F.H. Varley, 2020, archival print, 91.44 x 91.44 cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Clint Roenisch Gallery.

Jon Sasaki: Homage & I Contain Multitudes

February 27 – April 26, 2025
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 27, 5:00 – 8:00pm
Artist Talk: Thursday, February 27, 12:00 – 1:30pm, 368 ARTlab

School of Art Gallery, University of Manitoba presents Jon Sasaki: Homage and Jon Sasaki: I Contain Multitudes, two interconnected exhibitions exploring the intersections of art, history, and the microscopic landscapes within Canadian art legacies. The exhibitions will be on view from February 27 to April 26, 2025, in the Main Gallery and Collections Gallery at the School of Art Gallery, University of Manitoba.

Jon Sasaki: Homage

Curated by Sarah Milroy
Organized and circulated by the McMichael Canadian Art Collection

Curated by Sarah Milroy, Homage is a suite of photographs depicting petri dishes with bloomed microbial cultures derived from swabs of the palettes and brushes used by members of the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson, objects held in the archives of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. These works are monumental in scale, yet they reveal microscopic detail, affirming a playful reverence towards the Group’s legacy while reframing the genre of landscape painting through the lens of photography. Through these glowing bacterial landscapes Sasaki has generated a new sublime, a counterpoint to the quotidian nature of what lies beneath. The artifacts from which the microscopic organisms were gathered are exhibited in dialogue with the photographs, presenting a poignant entanglement of past and present-day artists in the story of Canadian art.

Exhibition Sponsors: Richard and Donna Ivey
Supported by Contact Photography Festival

Jon Sasaki: I Contain Multitudes

Curated by Blair Fornwald
Commissioned by School of Art Gallery, University of Manitoba

The School of Art Gallery is pleased to present a commissioned body of work by artist Jon Sasaki, created in response to its extensive collection of artworks and artifacts by Group of Seven artist and former School of Art Director, Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald.

Sasaki’s work interrogates the Canadian landscape painting tradition, the hagiographic value of the artist’s tools, and the creative potential that lies within institutional art collections. Inspired by FitzGerald’s delicate and strangely anthropomorphic renderings of trees, Sasaki has created a series of videos using a tiny endoscopic camera to probe inside the trees around FitzGerald’s former Winnipeg residence, on campus and in local parks, and in driftwood found on the beach near the Fitzgerald family cottage on Bowen Island, British Columbia. The miniature landscapes Sasaki finds and documents are intimate, unsettling, and surprising. I Contain Multitudes explores the many capacities and applications of the gaze–which can be used toward scientific or aesthetic ends, can abstract or clarify, and can romanticize or pathologize.

These two exhibitions invite audiences to reflect on the ways in which artistic production—both personal and historical—is shaped by time, biology, and invisible forces.

About the School of Art Gallery
The School of Art Gallery has been serving the School of Art, the University of Manitoba, and broader communities since it was established in 1965 as Gallery One One One. The Gallery exhibits and collects contemporary and historical art addressing a range of practices and perspectives. Exhibitions and collections are complemented by engaging outreach programs and publications.

Acknowledgments
The University of Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba campuses are located on the original lands of Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation. We respect the Treaties that were made on these territories, we acknowledge the harms and mistakes of the past, and we dedicate ourselves to move forward in partnership with Indigenous communities in a spirit of reconciliation and collaboration.

School of Art Gallery
255 ARTlab, 180 Dafoe Road
University of Manitoba (Fort Garry campus)
Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2
gallery@umanitoba.ca
204-474-9322
umanitoba.ca/art/gallery

Hours: Monday – Friday, 9:00am – 5:00pm, or by appointment
Closed all statutory holidays