B. B. Olshin
CANNED ART - Canned Couture, 2025
Mixed media
8" x 24" x 6"

Artist Statement

"Canned Couture" is a set from a large collection of pieces that are indeed "canned art" - recycled metal food cans are used by the artist to "host" small scenes, constructed with watercolour, craft paper, and other materials. The pieces use irony (e.g., in the "canned fish" works) and humour, combined with the idea of playing with scale and choices of material, to engage viewers and ask them to think further about how art can appear in many different settings and contexts. One of these pieces was recently published in a French magazine, and the works have proved popular to audiences locally, as well. In "Canned Couture", I am experimenting again with alliterative titles, and also seek to capture - well, to "can" - some interesting aspects of couture or fashion. Here, we have a canned "catwalk" with a model in the latest fashion, as well as a canned shoemaker, dressmaker, and haberdasher: all the ingredients for a successful bit of haute couture... in a can.

Artist Bio

Olshin completed his M.A. and Ph.D. in the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology (I.H.P.S.T.), at the University of Toronto, in September of 1993. His dissertation involved the history of cartography, examining early maps and sea charts. During these years, he also completed a series of watercolors in Toronto, did design and drafting work for an architecture firm in São Paulo, Brazil, and worked for an architecture atelier in Tokyo, Japan, designing, drafting, building architectural models, and doing restoration work. He also travelled through other parts of Japan during this period, and then journeyed to Hong Kong and Tahiti, doing numerous sketches, watercolors, and oil paintings.

https://benjaminbolshin.net

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