TORONTO (JUNE 19, 2025) — Winner of the 2023 Gershon Iskowitz Prize at the AGO award for outstanding contribution to Canadian art, acclaimed Montreal-born, UK-based artist Allison Katz makes her Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) debut this summer. Opening July 18, Inner Momentum is a focused presentation of new and recent works on canvas, designed to introduce Canadian audiences to her unique visual language, blending as it does humour, realism, and the fantastic.
Defying traditional categorization, Katz’s paintings incorporate wordplay and literary, historical, and autobiographic details to upend viewers’ expectations. On view in the Rosamond Ivey Gallery on Level 4, adjacent to highlights from the AGO’s Collection of Modern Art, the presentation opens with a clever nod to the modernism that both surrounds and informs much of her work.
Painted from a photograph taken in the 1970s, Truth (2023) is a portrait of Katz’s grandmother, Ruth, looking at Alberto Giacometti’s 1960 sculpture Walking Man in the courtyard of a French museum. To counter the way the camera has flattened the original bronze sculpture, Katz uses modeling paste to create a high relief that starkly contrasts and “sculpts” its textured surface. Emblematic of Katz’s multi-layered approach, in both appearance, installation, and title, Truth questions the limits of what a painting can be.
“I am excited by the way painting distorts time, how it allows me to play with continuity, and dissolve the space between what is contemporary and what is historical. My motifs are the net that I use to catch the world from all sides, through which I can make visible a vast constellation of affinities,” says Katz. “I look to painting for a jolt, for a visual energy that transmits a sense of enchantment and freedom. I want my work to be a conduit to those feelings.”
The presentation is curated by Debbie Johnsen, Assistant Curator, Contemporary Art, AGO. “Katz’s interest in the languages of painting goes beyond the canvas to explore the way in which we make and view art,” says Johnsen. “In contrast to the self-referential language often used in her paintings, the environments in which she exhibits are designed to be as generative as possible—her goal is to challenge expectations and resist fixed narratives. Referencing the iconic modernists Derain, Giacometti, and Munch, in proximity to works by Frankenthaler, Rauschenberg, and Warhol, this presentation demonstrates her ongoing, active engagement with how painting traditions shift and move over time and her efforts to situate and liberate herself.”
Cabbages and roosters are reoccurring motifs in Katz’s work—images whose mundane and playful appearances belie their versatility as symbols. Katz has been painting roosters since 2011, and in Between the cock and the bed (2024) the titular bird is animated by a series of overlapping silhouettes to indicate motion. For the patterned bed, Katz cites Norwegian artist Edvard Munch’s 1940 work Self-Portrait: Between the Clock and the Bed, which he painted at the end of his life. For each cock painting, she sprinkles grains of rice over the canvas, which she then paints over, creating an impasto texture that emphasizes the materiality of the painting’s surface.
Blurring boundaries between portraiture and still life, Katz’s newest work, Cabbage (and Philip) No. 39 (2025), sidelines the typical sitter in favour of a humble vegetable. The human silhouette of the artist’s husband exists only as a shadow, and in lieu of any human detail, the cabbage’s “head,” “heart,” and “veins” assume the role of facial features. Katz explains that the silhouette “activates the edge of the painting when we normally want to look at the centre. It’s a way to show how you can’t really paint your true desire; you have to go around it.”
Allison Katz: Inner Momentum features 7 works, loans courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth, and international collectors.
Allison Katz: Inner Momentum is on view through April 26, 2026. Admission to the AGO is always free for Ontarians under 25, Indigenous Peoples, AGO Members and Annual Passholders. For more information on how to become a Member or Annual Passholder, visit ago.ca/membership/become-a-member.
ABOUT ALLISON KATZ
Allison Katz was born in Montreal, Canada, in 1980 and currently lives and works in London, England. She studied Fine Arts at Concordia University in Montreal and received her MFA from Columbia University in New York. Katz’s work investigates the ways in which aesthetic practices link and absorb autobiography, information systems, graphic icons, and art history. Her diverse imagery, including roosters, cabbages, mouths, fairies, and noses, appears as recurring signs that build a constellation of ideas and references, which transmute across the mediums of painting, posters, ceramics, and installations.
Katz received widespread critical recognition for her first traveling UK solo exhibition Artery at Nottingham Contemporary (2021) and Camden Art Centre (2022). The exhibition was accompanied by the richly illustrated publication Artery, which situates itself somewhere between a monograph, an exhibition catalogue, and an artist’s book. Other recent solo exhibitions have been presented at Hauser & Wirth West Hollywood, Los Angeles, CA (2023); the MIT List Center for the Arts, Cambridge, MA (2018); Oakville Galleries, Oakville, Canada (2018); and Kunstverein Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany (2015). Notable group exhibitions include Capturing the Moment, Tate Modern, London, UK (2024); In Focus, Centraal Museum, Utrecht, Netherlands (2024), Cecilia Alemani’s The Milk of Dreams, La Biennale di Venezia, 59th International Exhibition, Venice, Italy (2022); Mixing It Up: Painting Today, Hayward Gallery, London, UK (2021); Slow Painting, curated by Hayward Touring, presented at Leeds Museum and Art Gallery, Leeds, UK; Levinsky Galley, Plymouth, UK (2020); Maskulinitäten, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, Germany (2019); and Paint, Also Known as Blood, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland (2019).
ABOUT THE GERSHON ISKOWITZ FOUNDATION
The Gershon Iskowitz Foundation is a private charitable foundation established in 1986 through the generosity of painter Gershon Iskowitz (1919–1988). Iskowitz recognized the importance of grants in the development of artists in Canada, in particular acknowledging that a grant from the Canada Council in 1967 gave him the freedom to create his distinctive style. Iskowitz’s works are in public and private collections across Canada and abroad. The Foundation’s principal activity is the designation of the Prize which is unique in that one can neither apply nor be nominated. A second distinct characteristic which many of the recipients have commented on is that the Prize is an excellent example of an artist supporting other artists. Iskowitz himself was actively involved in designating the Prize in its first years; after his death this responsibility passed to juries composed of trustees of the Foundation and invited artists and curators. The achievements of the first 20 years of the Foundation and the Prize are detailed in The Gershon Iskowitz Prize 1986–2006; the work of subsequent winners is included on the Foundation’s web site, www.iskowitzfoundation.ca
ABOUT THE GERSHON ISKOWITZ PRIZE AT THE AGO
At the 20-year mark of the Prize, the Foundation formed a collaborative partnership with the Art Gallery of Ontario to raise awareness of the importance of the Prize and through it, the visual arts in Canada. The AGO is home to Gershon Iskowitz’s archives, which include early works on paper, sketchbooks and memorabilia, and it holds 29 paintings by Iskowitz spanning 1948 to 1987 in its collection. Beginning in 2006, in addition to a substantial financial award, the Prize included a solo exhibition of the winner’s work at the museum. Among the 36 previous recipients of the Prize are Liz Magor, Betty Goodwin, General Idea, Stan Douglas, John Massey, Irene F. Whit tome, Françoise Sullivan, Geoffrey Farmer, Brian Jungen, Michael Snow, Kim Adams, Rebecca Belmore, and Ken Lum. Faye HeavyShield was the recipient of the 2021 Gershon Iskowitz Prize at the AGO, and Tim Whiten was the recipient of the 2022 Gershon Iskowitz Prize at the AGO. Tim Whiten: A Little Bit of Light is on view now at the AGO until August 17, 2025. Faye HeavyShield’s solo exhibition will open at the AGO on August 16, 2025.
ABOUT THE AGO
Located in Toronto, the Art Gallery of Ontario is one of the largest art museums in North America, attracting approximately one million visitors annually. The AGO Collection of more than 120,000 works of art ranges from cutting-edge contemporary art to significant works by Indigenous and Canadian artists and European masterpieces. The AGO presents wide-ranging exhibitions and programs, including solo exhibitions and acquisitions by diverse and underrepresented artists from around the world. The AGO is embarking on the seventh expansion it has undertaken since the museum was founded in 1900. When completed, the Dani Reiss Modern and Contemporary Gallery will increase exhibition space for the museum’s growing modern and contemporary collection. With its groundbreaking Annual Pass program, the AGO is one of the most affordable and accessible attractions in the GTA. Visit ago.ca to learn more.
The AGO is funded in part by the Ontario Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Gaming. Additional operating support is received from the City of Toronto, the Canada Council for the Arts, and generous contributions from AGO Members, donors, and private-sector partners.
For images and more information, please contact:
Andrea-Jo Wilson, Manager, Public Relations, AGO Communications
andrea-jo.wilson@ago.ca
Wendy So | Communications Officer
wendy.so@ago.ca