HARD/soft explores the evolving relationship between industrial materials and the spaces we inhabit. Featuring furniture, design objects, and artworks that push the limits of materiality, the exhibition raises questions about the interplay of form, function, and expression. Visitors are invited to reconsider how the built environment shapes our lives — and how artists and designers are reshaping it in return.
Photography by Darren Rigo.
David Bolton is a Toronto-based artist, fabricator, and electrician whose sculptural practice reimagines salvaged industrial waste as one-of-a-kind artworks. Grounded in decades of experience in mechanical design and electrical systems, his process is entirely manual — no two pieces are ever the same. He works in close creative partnership with his wife Melanie, whose background in film and television brings a refined aesthetic sensibility to each piece. Together they create what they call "pragmatic sculptures": works that balance raw industrial form with meticulous craftsmanship, and resist overconsumption by finding beauty in what others discard.
Julia Campisi is a visual artist working in sculpture, installation, and photography. Her practice explores the dynamics that sustain our society through industrial motifs and tools encountered in daily life, recreated using self-taught molding and casting techniques. With a background in photography from Concordia University and Toronto Metropolitan University, her primary materials are resin and acrylic — whose translucency invokes the symbolic language of photography. Her work questions how our built environment defines culture, and examines the capacity of overlooked objects to shape who we are.
Robert Davidovitz is a Toronto-based multidisciplinary artist best known for his "woven paint" series, which blurs the line between painting and textile media. A graduate of York University's Visual Arts program, his work has been exhibited at Museum London, Durham Art Gallery, Thames Art Gallery, and Harbourfront Centre, and supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and Toronto Arts Council. His process involves extruding acrylic paint through pastry tips to form flexible, ribbon-like strands — first woven into structured grid compositions, and more recently shaped into flowing organic forms where unpredictable "happy accidents" give each piece its own identity.
Huy Lam is a multidisciplinary artist based in Toronto. Born in Vietnam, his practice is rooted in non-verbal communication and process-based construction informed by his meditation practice. Working across collage, sculpture, and metal and woodworking, he creates meticulously crafted works that celebrate the material qualities of wood and fine metals. A Photography graduate of Humber College, Lam worked as a professional photographer for over a decade before expanding into sculpture and furniture. His work has been exhibited in Canada, Japan, and the US; his 2024 solo exhibition Yield was held at Grimsby Public Art Gallery. He is represented by United Contemporary and Gallery Ether (Tokyo).