Today I had the pleasure of attending Come Up To My Room 2019 at the historic Gladstone Hotel.
CUTMR 2019 is an annual alternative art and design exhibition commissioned by the Gladstone Hotel during Interior Design Week in Toronto every January.
The exhibition takes place over all four floors of the hotel in both the public and private spaces. The second floor opens up its hotel room doors and makes way for full scale exhibits to transform the 130 year old space into something experimental and new.
Let me start by saying this year is truly exceptional. My belief in this exhibition has been faithfully restored.
I was hesitant to attend CUTMR this year given that last year I found the showing to be rather unimpressive. The exhibition seemed to be getting cheaper every year and devolving into high concept/low execution or low concept/high execution curation but I’m ecstatic that they’ve done away with the arts and crafts projects this year.
Thankfully the curators have moved onto thoughtful pieces, professionally executed (for the most part) by professional and student artists and designers who remain outside the mainstream keeping with the alternative nature that birthed the exhibition 16 years ago.
CUTMR has returned in fine form so it is with great difficulty that I narrow down my top 10 installations this year.
A Look at Come Up to My Room 2019
Cabinet Fantastique: Ghost City
by Sonia Gemmiti and Christy Stoeten
Tron209
by Bruno Billio
Water Bed
by Ilze Godlevskis
Fraktur
by Ryerson Architecture’s [R]ed[U]x Lab
Connect
by Safoura Zahedi
A City/Chandelier
by Alex R.M. Thompson
Eastern Bloc (Collapse)
by Georgina Lee Walker and Youri Makovski
Terraflora
by Cole Swanson
Transform in Fringe
by Charlize Nhung
Penumbra
by Chromatic Aberration
Come Up To My Room 2019 runs from Thursday, January 17, 2019 to Sunday, January 21, 2019 at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto. For more information, visit the official website.
Have you been to Come Up To My Room before? What do you think of this year’s exhibition? Which installation is your favourite?
Rose Lagacé | @artdepartmental
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