MKG127 is pleased to present Pink Noises : we waste time, an exhibition of new work by Instant Coffee

Opening Saturday, November 23, 2:00 – 5:00 PM

Over its now twenty-year history the artist collective Instant Coffee has used pink to define its relationship to its own consumption. The colour pink for the collective becomes a marker of its attraction as well as its method of gaining attention. Pink has surfaced throughout IC’s existence as the primary property of an art object or installation, or has been the basic aesthetics of the promotional material around its activities – essentially unifying the artwork and how it is marketed. Pink Noises: We Make Waste is a culmination and a clash. For a portion of this exhibition IC has selected several pinks from its history to reflect on their appeal to this colour as a constant element and generative source.  This history in pink is a centrepiece from which the collective looks at the material of capital or more directly the material of consumerism from neon pink price tags to soft pink sandwich boards. Pink is not simply a colour but an approach, a direction and a beginning from which IC has unfolded, replicated and resold the basic elements of commercial marketing into broken bits.   

Instant Coffee is a service-oriented artist and curatorial collective based in Winnipeg and Vancouver, Canada. Since establishing in 2000, Instant Coffee has had numerous solo exhibitions, including UDT at the Art Gallery of Ontario; Take the Easy Way, MKG127, Toronto; and The hero, the villain, the salesman, the parent, a sidekick and a servant, Teck Gallery at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver. In 2015, Instant Coffee launched Colours, a public artwork in Burnaby, Canada, and concluded a Fieldhouse Studio residency with the City of Vancouver. The collective has presented special projects and installations as part of Vancouver’s 2010 Cultural Olympiad, at Subdivision in Hamburg, as part of the Encuentro International Medellin 07 in Colombia, at Hotel Maria Kapel in The Netherlands, the Toronto Sculpture Garden, the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. In 2018 working with Grunt Gallery, the collective opened Pink Noise Pop Up in two locations in Seoul, South Korea at One and J +1 and Space One. This is the collective’s fourth exhibition at MKG 127. Instant Coffee is currently Jinhan Ko, Khan Lee, Sunny Lee and Jenifer Papararo. Past IC Members include Kate Monro, Stephen Crowhurst, Cecilia Berkovic, Timothy Comeau, Jon Sasaki, Emily Hogg and Kelly Lycan.