Liz Magor

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Liz Magor, “Float,” 2021, mixed media (courtesy of the artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York)

Liz Magor’s exhibition The Separation features recent and new work from the Winnipeg-born, Vancouver-based artist whose sculptures have been influenced by studies of dead animals, death, and the artistic process. On view at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Toronto until Feb. 4, 2024, Magor’s newly commissioned work is steeped in light despite its dark influences.

Float is a sculpture of a heron-like bird laying flat on its side. Placed on two rug-like fabrics stacked on top of each other, the bird’s feathers are cast in a metallic sheen so that looking at the bird simultaneously recalls its environment. I remembered a heron perched in Vancouver’s Lost Lagoon, the light reflecting off its wet feathers, even though Magor’s bird is at rest, legs tucked neatly against its body beside its wings, eyes closed tight in rest.

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Liz Magor, “Drift,” 2021, mixed media (courtesy of the artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery)

Similarly, Drift features a lion-like figure resting on a shag rug and colourful fringed fleece atop a work bench. Yet another table is stacked over the sculpture so that it is framed within the context of the studio. Its eyeholes are shadowed in a flesh-toned red, harkening Magor’s frequent reference to animal corpses to create casts and molds. Because I am guided to view the sculpture between workspaces, Magor’s Drift resists morbidity and instead takes on a liminal quality that draws attention to the work’s suspension between being made and completed.

The Stream, Magor’s newest work commissioned by MoCA, consists of a series of mylar boxes spread across the gallery floor in a modular arrangement like shipping containers seen from above. Unlike containers, these boxes are transparent and shallow, with many about a foot high, but their contents are difficult to see because of the glare from natural and overhead lights.

Magor installed overhead light fixtures adorned with playful monkey-like figures, making it difficult to see the contents of the boxes clearly. The lamps are directly above the work, shining on the celebratory array of gift-wrap materials used throughout. In one box, two model lions mark their territory on a navy blue gift bag stuffed with an intricate gold paisley tissue. In another, gold cupcake wrappings are scattered on a tissue gilded in a pink sheen while a sippy cup’s straw juts out of the box as if breaking a boundary between the world of the box and the reality outside.

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Liz Magor, “The Stream” (detail), 2023, mixed media (courtesy of the artist and Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver)

In an interview with Art21, Magor discusses the “stream” as one of waste: “The objects come first, and objects flow through systems. We use them, we waste them, we wear them out, and then it comes out the other end. They call it the waste stream. I’m not an animist, but I do feel the objects that have been in the world for a while, they’ve got all this stuff in them that comes out…”

What comes “out” in Magor’s objects is their various states. In several boxes featuring casts of dead birds – some of which are topped with real bird skulls fitted with false eyes – the sheen of the paint glows with an aliveness that is uncanny. Notably, a mangled bird is painted a vivid purple and rests on a violet plastic bag of a similar shade, making everyday detritus beautiful.

By placing gift wrap, sculptures modelled after dead animals, and various other kinds of waste such as casts of coffee lids and cups side-by-side, Magor creates a disarming sense of equivalence where what is new and precious endures in the shine of an everlasting now. In The Separation, what has passed, will be passing, and may never pass are all fixed in time across boxes. If the stream is a waste stream, then it is also necessarily a stream of time. ■

Liz Magor’s exhibition The Separation is at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto, from Sept. 7 to Feb. 4, 2024

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