Jessica Auer is a documentary-style landscape photographer whose work is largely concerned with the study of cultural sites. Like the artists of the Renaissance Grand Tour, she explores locations where history and mythology are woven into the landscape and contemporary issues emerge. Inspired by her last name, which roughly translates to “from the meadow,” Auer traveled through Europe to investigate the environment of her ancestors. Auer’s sight-specific commission for the South Lobby brings the building’s industrial interior to life with a richly detailed meadow scene.

Auer received her MFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University, Montreal in 2007 and is the recipient of several awards, including the W.B. Bruce European Fine Art Travel Fellowship and the Roloff Beny Prize, as well as grants from the Quebec Arts Council (CALQ). Her work has been exhibited in Canada and the United States and is held in various private and public collections, including the Musée des Beaux Arts du Québec, the Canada Council Art Bank and the Cirque du Soleil. Jessica is co-founder and board member at Galerie Les Territoires in Montréal and teaches photography at Concordia University. She is represented by Patrick Mikhail Gallery in Ottawa.

Lorna Bauer is known for her exploration of photography about photographic processes. She examines the institution of photography by pushing the medium to its limits, capturing imagery that often goes overlooked and drawing attention to things often purposefully ignored. In the work on view here, Bauer depicts vintage flashbulbs used in early flash photography. Displayed in custom light boxes, the images create a self-referential circuit that echoes the flashbulbs’ original function.

Bauer received a Bachelor of Fine Arts with distinction from Concordia University, Montreal in 2005 and a Masters degree from the University of Toronto in 2009. She has had solo exhibitions at Galerie Nicolas Robert, Montreal; Gallerie Les Territoires, Montreal and the Art Gallery of Mississauga. Her work has been included in many group exhibitions including the 2011 Triennale du Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal.

Amy Brener works with layered resin, concrete, found materials and reflective and distorted surfaces to created light sensitive totemic sculptures. She creates her works by hand, pouring layers of tinted resin or concrete into a wooden frame. As the resin and concrete layers solidify, Brener embeds mirrors, glass, lenses and other found materials into the surface. Spear, a site-specific commission, is a delicate sculpture that appears to both absorb and reflect the surrounding light. This unearthly object resembles a futuristic fossil and the accumulated elements, rich colors, and textures encourage repeat viewing.

Brener received her MFA from Hunter College in 2010 and was a participant of Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2011. She was a 2012 Fellow in the Artist-in-Residence program at the Bemis Center of Contemporary Art in Omaha, NE. Her work has been exhibited in New York, Miami, Toronto and London, among others.

Founded by Sara Parisotto and Hamid Samad, Commute Home is an interdisciplinary design studio in Toronto. Commute Home sells original furniture and home accessories and creates custom commissions, like the Spike Chandelier on view here.

In his New Math series, ongoing since 2002, Craig Damrauer combines graphic design and basic mathematical processes to create witty equations that attempt to decipher human experience. With content ranging from the definition of modern art to marriage and divorce, these formulas act as stripped down commentaries on social and political issues, human interaction, and basic components of living. Damrauer describes the series as “an attempt to quantify the world using words and basic math.”

Damrauer is an artist and writer. His work has been shown at the MCA Denver, Los Angeles Contemporary Editions, the Pulse Art Fair and has appeared in the New York Times, Mother Jones and GOOD. A version of New Math, edited by Ed Ruscha was published by CT Editions in 2010.

Dennis Ekstedt’s depictions of dream-like night cityscapes glow with the brilliance of a thousand electric bulbs. His paintings abstract the effects of light and electricity in urban environments, creating a sense of light emanating from deep within the canvas. Ekstedt says, “In my paintings I want to depict the illuminated city as a kind of living organism, with its network of electric lights resembling a nervous system. I find it fascinating how this nervous system of electric light is ultimately a manifestation of human habitation – that illuminated cities are landscapes that are literally electrified by human presence. I am interested in how urban environments are difficult to experience in their entirety, how at ground level we perceive fragments of a larger whole; but when we see a city at night from a distance we have an opportunity to comprehend it more as a complete entity, a kind of vast luminous organism.”

Ekstedt received his Diploma in Fine Arts in 1986 from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver and his MFA in 1993 from Concordia University in Montreal. He was the Eastern Canada winner of the RBC Canadian Painting Competition in 2002 and his paintings are included in many public, corporate and private collections. He is currently represented by Herringer Kiss Gallery in Calgary, Alberta and Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects in Toronto, Ontario.

Thomas Kneubühler’s work examines the relationship between technology, landscape and the built environment. His Electric Mountain series depicts mountain ranges of Quebec ski resorts artificially lit at night. Kneubϋhler allows the bright lights of these electrified mountains to act as the only light source for his richly textured night photographs. The result is an unusual view of the areas just off the slopes. Both jarringly artificial and serenely otherworldly, Kneubüler’s photographs reveal the confusion between the natural and the manmade, as well as the real and the unreal.

Born in Solothurn, Switzerland, Thomas Kneubühler has been living in Canada since 2000. He completed his Master’s degree in Studio Arts at Concordia University, Montreal in 2003 and has exhibited in many national and international exhibitions. His work was included in the 2011 Québec Triennial at le Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal. Numerous Canadian and international collections include: Basler Kunstkredit, Canada Council Art Bank, Canton of Solothurn, Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, Concordia University, Conseil des Arts de Montréal, Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, Kunstsammlung Basel-Landschaft, and RBC Royal Bank of Canada. He was awarded the prestigious Pratt & Whitney Canada Prize of the Conseil des arts de Montréal in 2011 and was a finalist in the 2012 Swiss Art Awards.

Aaron Kreiswirth’s photographs examine the influence of the environment on the individual. Much of his work captures remnants of a complex and conflicted past while ruminating on the present. The conflation between past/present and urban/landscape creates a subtle tension that can be both alluring and disquieting. Bay of Fundy Diptych depicts this contrast between man and nature on a ferry off the Atlantic coast of Canada. The Bay of Fundy area is known for having the highest tidal range in the world; Mi’kmaq First Nation folklore claims the high tides are caused by a giant whale splashing in the water.

Kreiswirth is a photographer and documentary filmmaker. He received a BA in Philosophy from Cornell, an MA in Media Studies from the New School, and an MFA in Photography from Pratt Institute. His work has been exhibited in group shows at BAMart and Hunter College and was featured in Revista Asterisco, a Colombian arts publication. His work is included in several private collections.

Corwyn Lund’s work reconstructs space and reanimates the relationship between viewer and object. His interactive artworks create a new understanding of the individual within the spaces they inhabit, engaging with the audience while attempting to open a new way of experiencing the world. This work is from the Bokeh Mirror series, which calls on the Japanese word ‘bokeh’ to reference the out-of-focus areas of a photograph and the bright light outside a camera’s depth of field. By looking in these mirrors, the viewer’s understanding of self is rewritten and, quite literally, blurred.

Lund is an alumnus of the University of Alberta. He has exhibited extensively locally and internationally. His work is in the collection of the National Gallery’s Library & Archives, the Canada Council Art Bank, TD Bank Group and Gladstone Hotel, as well as private and corporate collections. He is represented by Diaz Contemporary, Toronto.

Todd McLellan’s meticulously organized images reveal a fascination with order and detail and a curiosity about the material world. In his Disassembly Series, McLellan takes apart and arranges the components of design classics that employ out of date technology, including an old phone, SLR camera, sewing machine, lawnmower, and tape recorder. He also creates photographs where the object appears to be exploding, each disassembled piece frozen in a moment of flight. His work acts as rumination on the transformation of technology and as reminders of the child-like joy of seeing how things work.

McLellan received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Alberta’s College of Art & Design and is a member of the Sugino Studio team, specializing in automotive, commercial, and conceptual work. An extension of the Dissassembly Series can be found in the 2013 book Things Come Apart, published by Thames and Hudson. This book expands with the same whimsical curiosity beyond vintage items to include contemporary technology.

Ianick Raymond attempts to create a dual vision of the world: one composed of what we see initially and one illustrating what we typically ignore or overlook. His work draws on found imagery, combining a hard-edge technique with freely applied paint to develop abstract images where these worlds can coexist. His intricate and richly detailed abstract paintings have an incandescent quality when seen from afar and from up close reveal complex color theory, patterning and formal relationships. He writes, “I am concerned with the disjunction that exists between what we see and what we believe to see. Can we trust the images that our eyes perceive?”

Raymond received his degree in Visual Arts from UQAM in 2007. He participated in the 2005-2006 residency at the École supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Marseille, France and received the Robert-Wolfe excellency award from UQÀM for the exhibition Printemps Plein Temps in 2007 and the Artiste de la relève Prize in 2009 by the Musée d’art contemporain des Laurentides. His work has been shown extensively in solo and group shows in Canada. In 2011 he was a semi-finalist for the prestigious Royal Bank of Canada Painting Prize. His works are part of numerous private and public collections including Collection Loto-Québec and Progressive Insurance.

Matt Shane constructs large-scale drawings and paintings of imagined worlds. Typically depicted from an aerial perspective, these worlds are mercurial and draw upon notions of the constructed present and potential future. His landscapes often take on an apocalyptic tone, devoid of human presence but formed by human hands. Shane is drawn to the forces of creation/destruction and growth/decay, and his work reflects this clash in its content, palette, and oftentimes in its own ephemerality. The painting on view here was created during Shane’s 2012 residency at Omi International Arts Center. Located in the Hudson River Valley in New York, Shane was inspired by the rich history of landscape painting in the area to expand his work to reference a real, rather than imagined, place in a panoramic mural style.

Shane received his BFA from the University of Victoria in 2004 and is currently completing his MFA at Concordia University, Montreal. He was National Winner of the Bank of Montreal’s 1st Art Competition and received an Emerging Artist Grant from the Imperial Tobacco Artistic Development Board to exhibit the first of many collaborative projects with artist Jim Holyoak. Shane has co-organized public drawing installations, which often involve hundreds of participants, in Los Angeles, Montreal, Victoria, and at the Banff Centre in Canada. His work was included in the 2011 Québec Triennial at the Museed’Art Contemporain de Montréal and a group show at the GEM Museum for Contemporary Art, The Hague, Netherlands. He has participated in artists residencies at Cuadro Dubai, Omi International Arts Center, the Banff Centre, the Vermont Studio Center and KIAC in Dawson City, Yukon.

Stamen Design was founded by Eric Rodenbeck in 2001. Stamen engages with emerging digital media to create compelling interactive design and data visualization projects in an attempt to broaden knowledge and make information beautiful. They have established partnerships with a diverse group of organizations, including financial institutions, artists and architects, car manufacturers, design agencies, museums, technology firms, political action committees, and universities. Stamen visualizations have captured cultural events, such as the real-time display of the Twitterverse response to Kanye West’s interruption of Taylor Swift at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.