Each art object in Marman & Borins’ exhibition functions as a character who represents a different approach to art production. Not unlike the current state of culture, dialogues between the personalities parody the conversations we witness in everyday life, where discussions of ideologies have become personal and emotional. The exhibition is meta-theatrical. Their show has the intention of drawing attention to the conventions, the nature, and the circumstances of the act of exhibiting art. While this exhibition is experimental in claim, Marman and Borins have, in their practice, often created fictitious scenarios and habitually investigated authenticity. What is defined as ‘authentic’? Who decides? What factors prove this claim? Where do these hierarchies come from and who can challenge them? In The Fourth Wall, Marman and Borins refer to the cinematic and theatrical convention of an imagined wall that separates the actors and the audience. Now presented as art exhibition, the viewer (audience) is immersed in a dialogue between art works vying for our attention and appealing to our behavioral typologies.

Marman and Borins can be considered interdisciplinary post-conceptualists who have resisted formalist convention, as they have executed ideas across a variety of media. Their stylistic indicators are initially challenging to point out. However, in the case of this exhibition, they are interventionists, able to master and then reinvent the connection between their audience and the venue. Some of Marman and Borins’ best reconfigurations are seen in the realms of intended space, its usages, the reprogramming of architecture, and the sub-textual boundaries in-between. Developed for the historic Texas Theatre, The Fourth Wall exhibition anticipates the venue as a movie theatre, acknowledges the audience, and addresses the barrier between the reality of the exhibition and its recipients. This aesthetic experience, itself, is worth exploring as subject. The artists playfully desecrate performative convention and the conceits of the art exhibition.

To ‘break the fourth wall’, Marman and Borins ask us to break the self-consciousness and absorption of the viewing experience. By making the artworks talk, the esteem of the object is compromised. For Marman & Borins, the state of in-between-ess of each art object, and its destabilization, becomes both a strength and a value. This questioning of whether an object is or is not art becomes the nexus of possibility for the propositional aspects of art. And possibility is thereby essential to the definition of new forms of art. They believe that the functionality of art circulates around an already-known idea - and that this convention can be challenged. The artists express their desire to figuratively prop up the art object to “make it almost believable,” and they execute the works in The Fourth Wall as so.

With stagecraft and wizardry in their aesthetics, the artists transform the gallery space into a mise-en-scene, probing our agency within the viewing of contemporary art. Some artists, writers, curators and gallerists have become unwittingly trope-like in their standards and expectation for art, how it has to look, and how it is meant to function. Has the purpose of art changed? The Fourth Wall represents an attempt by Marman and Borins to question some of the modalities of how art is exhibited, while simultaneously, questioning present-day reality and its indistinguishability with parody. The artists’ effort is serious but wry, while they elude to the professionalism and dogmatism that maintains the invisible wall between the viewer and how we value art.

Jennifer Marman (born in 1965) and Daniel Borins (born in 1974) have co-authored work since 2000. Marman holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of Western Ontario, and Borins holds a BA in Art History from McGill University. Both artists have also obtained advanced degrees from the Ontario College of Art and Design. In a body of work encompassing installations, paintings, large-format sculpture, and electronic art, Marman and Borins contextualize visual art within everyday life while simultaneously referring to and reassessing institutional twentieth century art history. Solo exhibitions include the Art Gallery of Ontario (Ontario), the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (Alberta), Robert McLaughlin Gallery (Ontario), the Art Gallery of Hamilton (Hamilton), and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (AZ). Select group exhibitions include The Power Plant (Toronto), the Hong Kong-Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale (Hong Kong and Shenzhen), and the National Gallery of Canada (Canada). Their work is held in several notable public collections, including the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), and the City of Toronto. Public commissions include The Water Guardians for Waterfront Toronto, Dodecadandy for the City of Toronto and Toronto Transit Commission, and Google for The Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto. The artists live and work in Toronto.

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