Eavesdropping on the music department, Warmup captures the sounds of music students working in their studios above the Art Gallery of York University. Listen closely and you can hear the students warming up, tuning their instruments, rehearsing snippets of the composition that they will all play in unison momentarily. We anticipate that any minute now, someone’s direction will wrest enchanting music from this cacophonous prelude.
Any minute now…

Jon Sasaki’s practice of “romantic conceptualism” incorporates primarily performance-for-video, objects, installations, and interventions. His work has been presented solo exhibitions at Gallery TPW (Toronto), The New Gallery (Calgary), and Latitude 53 (Edmonton), and he has participated in recent group exhibitions at VOX (Montreal), Susan Hobbs Gallery (Toronto), the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery (Toronto), the Owens Art Gallery (Mount Allison University, Sackville NB), Simon Fraser University Gallery, as well as the 2006 and 2008 editions of Toronto’s Nuit Blanche. Upcoming solo exhibitions will be presented at Jessica Bradley Art+Projects (Toronto), The Doris McCarthy Gallery (University of Toronto at Scarborough), and 126 (Galway, Ireland). Jon was an active member of the Instant Coffee art collective between 2002 and 2007. He lives and works in Toronto.

The artist and the Art Gallery of York University would like to thank the York University Symphony Orchestra, Mark Chambers, and Simon Head for their assistance in producing this work.