Tim Whiten Receives Gershon Iskowitz Prize

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(Tim Whiten / courtesy of the Art Gallery of Ontario)

Toronto artist Tim Whiten is the winner of the $75,000 Gershon Iskowitz Prize, which includes a 2025 solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario. It is awarded for outstanding contribution to the visual arts in Canada.

Whiten, 81, has been creating personal and evocative works that unite the spiritual, emotional, intellectual and material realms for some five decades.

"He has pursued a creative practice – one that includes gestural drawings, sculptures, performances and installations – rooted in a deep understanding of spiritual cultural practices from around the world," the gallery said Wednesday.

"Whiten deploys this knowledge in his work, creating intimate experiences that allow for the experience and contemplation of forces beyond our conscious comprehension. His profound spiritual investigations evade easy categorization and manifest in ways that are both spellbinding and impeccably produced."

Whiten's process-driven practice employs materials from everyday life, often tools or toys.  

Whiten was born in Michigan in 1941. After completing military service, he moved to Toronto in 1968 to teach at York University, retiring in 2007 with the title professor emeritus.

He has had solo exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery in Waterloo, Ont., the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts in Montreal, and the Koffler Gallery in Toronto.  

Whiten's work has been included in numerous group exhibitions across Canada and has been collected by private collections and public institutions including the National Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of Ontario. He is represented by Toronto's Olga Korper Gallery.

Jurors for the 2022 prize, a collaboration between the Gershon Iskowitz Foundation and the Art Gallery of Ontario, were Toronto artist Max Dean; Michelle Jacques, chief curator at the Remai Modern in Saskatoon; Catherine Crowston, director of the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton; Gerald McMaster, artist and director of the Wapatah Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge at OCAD University; and Stephan Jost, CEO of the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Previous recipients include Liz Magor, Betty Goodwin, General Idea, Stan Douglas, Geoffrey Farmer, Brian Jungen, Michael Snow, Ken Lum and Rebecca Belmore.

A solo exhibition by Faye HeavyShield, the 2021 recipient, will be held in early 2024, the gallery said. 

Source: Art Gallery of Ontario