Jalil is an artist with a background in photography. He has spent the last decade documenting his travels and experiences with friends, family, and partners, mostly on 35mm film. In his work he seeks to evoke intimacy and a recurring motif is the exploration of connection between people and place.He forges, nourishes and investigates personal connections between himself, subject, and viewer through the objects he presents.   Jalil is inventive with the media on which he displays his images, challenging traditions of photographic presentation and foregoing framed print or screen in favour of more textural and three dimensional materials. He has printed images on fleece, silk, and custom made puzzles, constructing objects to be experienced and contemplated.  Throughout the years...

“Chicken or the Egg?” & “Serenity Now” are limited 18x24 inch prints on satin wide format paper, available at The Letter Bet online store.  The TLB specialty print program is about working closely with like minded artists to create prints that can be purchased online by our community. Kyle Berger is a photographer born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, now residing in Toronto, Ontario. The many folds of his documentation continue to challenge reality and consistently draw the viewer through its vibrant depiction of subject matter. TLB: What is your basic process?  KB: For taking the images, it’s a mixture of aimless wandering, capturing any old thing that peaks my interest. I upload them to my hard-drive and forget about...

“Megumu”, “Bambi” and “Mei”, are limited 18x24 inch prints on satin wide format paper, available tomorrow at The Letter Bet online store.    The TLB specialty print program is about working closely with like minded artists to create prints that can be purchased online by our community. Yuki Kasai-Paré is a Montreal based photographer. She has been taking photos on and off for 5 years now.  TLB: How has location influenced your work in the past and present?  YK-P: The location directs how I shoot. If possible, I avoid indoor studios at all cost and try to work outside or in a lived environment. I also try to avoid planning ahead before I get to a location where I’m shooting....

Like most good relationships they start off getting to know one another over a extended period of time, and then before you know it you're producing 17 foot light boxes off the main street in downtown Montreal together.  All jokes aside, that is legitimately how this collaboration with Scott has come about over the last 10 years and as you can see we are in LOVE.   This is just the beginning of what we have in store for the future  with Scott, including the release of his new book concept next month.     FORGET ME NOT will be on display at the corner of St Laurent + Ave Des Pins Ouest until November 30th, lit every evening from sunset...

The Toronto-based artist discusses his Japanese-inspired show at the Letter Bet. Interview by Ben KrizPhotos by celia spenard-ko For Calgary-born, Toronto-based artist eks.rei, his art has become his escape. Fitting then that he has hit his stride working in a contemporary Sumi-e style. The earliest such painters were highly disciplined monks trained in the art of concentration, simplicity, and clarity. With calligraphic strokes of dark ink, these qualities come through both in his work and when speaking with him. And while Parapraxis, his first show at The Letter Bet, deals heavily in skeletal figures—it’s not death he’s fixated on—it’s life. The pieces in Parapraxis, heavily feature the ultimate symbol of death—the skeleton—and I suppose you could say what creates life—sex.  Where...

How did Me vs Others develop?I started the series in December 2014 - I had a recently dyed my hair orange and happened to have an orange wig lying around and I thought it would be a fun experiment to dress my friend Edwin up as myself and take a self-portrait that way. From that point on, I became more and more interested in developing the idea and creating a series that was based on visual cues of myself projected onto others (which, at the end of the day, I think most photographers do anyway as such is the nature of the gaze/photography itself). Our current society is very obsessed with newness, but I really like long-term work; working on the same idea year after year...

How did DS al Coda develop? A couple years back I found myself going through my family photos, trying to find some kind of reference material for a series. It wasn’t a pointed search just, an aimless wandering through the photos trying to find themes and narratives, when I noticed the amount of research material from my father’s work that had slipped its way into the collection. It lead to a deep dive into the family photo archive and a consequent body of work around the research in relation to the photos, however it didn’t seem done. The show was put on in a smaller gallery and out of hundred or so works I made on the topic I think...

Sean Brown is a Toronto-based artist, fashion designer, photographer, creative director, etc. What separates Sean from contemporaries who carry those same labels, however, is his knack for meticulous execution. Sean prides himself on doing things and doing them well, despite being mostly self-taught in all of the domains he explores via his expression.  Sean Brown est un artiste, créateur de mode, photographe et directeur de création établi à Toronto. Ce qui le distingue des autres créateurs de son époque, c’est sa manière d’exécuter les choses méticuleusement. Il est fier de bien faire les choses qu’il entreprend, quoiqu'il soit autodidacte dans la plupart des domaines artistiques qu'il explore. His mantra: Research, Travel, Design. Sean’s work does not revel in the realm of instant gratification, in spite of...

What is #digijoe? You've shared digital collages for a couple of years now, with plant life being your main subject. Is there a particular motivation/intention behind your selection to manipulate photos of flora? #digijoe is my way of trying to appropriate camouflage in a fun and enjoyable way visually. The main motivation behind it is to expand people's thoughts on camouflage past the war association and with the loud and vibrant spices or flowers it's easier to get that point across. I wouldn’t want to put any limitations on it but mom nature will always be a main subject. #digijoe, c’est quoi? Depuis quelques années, vous partagez des collages numériques en ayant comme sujet principal les plantes. Est-ce qu’il y a...