Toronto’s most notorious art party, Power Ball, returns this Thursday, June 1st to The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in collaboration with presenting sponsor Max Mara. The over-the-top art event famed for transforming The Power Plant into a stimulating world of discovery, is more than just a night of Instagrammable art, cocktails, culinary moments, and fashion–the funds raised during the evening support year-round exhibitions and public programs at the leading contemporary art space.
Now in its 19th year, this year’s theme follows Stereo Vision, inviting well-heeled Power Ballers to explore an immersive sensory experience that positions partygoers as both active and passive contributors during a two-hour VIP celebration. To bring this one-night-only, otherworldly environment to life, The Power Plant has called upon Mexico City-based architecture and design studio, Pedro&Juana.
Made up of founders Ana Paula Ruiz Galindo and Mecky Reuss–Galindo is from Mexico and Reuss a native of Germany–the pair have worked on countless projects across the world, ranging from public installations to interior spaces and furniture designs.
“We want to keep our installation a surprise until Power Ball, however we can tell you that it will involve a mirroring play of vignettes,” spills Galindo and Reuss. “Our activation will be a party inside a party that will allow guests to experience multiplicities and repetitions of that party.” Their can’t-miss, site-specific installation takes Édouard Manet’s painting A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882) as its point of inspiration they reveal.
Galindo and Reuss met in 2005 while attending SCI-Arc (the Southern California Institute of Architecture). The duo spent six years working at Jorge Pardo Sculpture (JPS) in both Los Angeles and Mérida, Mexico before founding Pedro&Juana in 2011 in Mexico City.
Self-describing their work as “contextual, non-discriminatory, non-ideological, and digitally artisanal,” S/ asked Galindo and Reuss to take us through some of their favourite past work.
Don’t miss out! There’s still time to get your hands on tickets to Toronto’s most influential art soirée by visiting powerball.thepowerplant.org.