Shining a light on the 1970s gallery that only showed artworks that had to be plugged in

Emanating from somewhere deep inside the white walls of 272 Avenue Rd. in Toronto, a humming, sizzling, purplish-red light casts a galvanizing glow onto the bleak and barren street outside. 

The artificial aura produced by this exhibition of neon and LED artworks is as seductive as a bare bulb to a moth. On view at Two Seven Two gallery until February 15, the show From Electrical Fire Spirits May Be Kindled sees seven Canadian artists bend light into sculpture.  

Neon typically appears as text in the urban landscape, so it follows that some of the exhibition artists find something to say with the medium. "GRRRLS GRRRLS GRRRLS," reads Pamila Matharu's LED Invited To The Party, But Never Asked To Dance — a riff on stripclub signage with a feminist punk bent — while Julia Rose Sutherland's 2018 piece, Flesh Economics, similarly references red-light district neons with its proclamation of "Deeply Loved Flesh." 

"It's like listening to vinyl," curator Emma Bain says of being in proximity to the neon tubes, which feel different from other kinds of electric light. "It's softer, and there's a buzz to it." Shellie Zhang's arrangements of neon fruit from 2022 capture that nostalgic mood, paying homage to immigrant greengrocers, whose displays were the target of an unsuccessful protest on Toronto's Danforth Avenue in 1934. 

Nearby, in a work from 2017, Katie Bethune-Leamen attaches an ultraviolet neon tube to the wall using lumpy glazed porcelain fixtures. Next to this, she props a vintage movie poster framed in purple on stacks of painted aluminum bars resembling Dr. Bronner's lavender soap. Neon isn't exactly designed to be stared at, but when used in the service of art, it's hard to look away. 

The most vital element of the exhibition, however, is its undercurrent, which illuminates the nearly forgotten history of the foundational Toronto art space that once shared this address. Fifty years ago, the building at 272 Avenue Rd. was home to the Electric Gallery — an eccentric, experimental project, active between 1970 and 1979, with a singular mandate: It would only exhibit an artwork if it had a plug at the end of it. 

Bain and Two Seven Two co-founder Yasmin Nurming-Por became aware of the building's legacy while scouting a home for their new commercial gallery, which opened in August 2023. "We wanted to be close to other galleries to form community," says Bain, who reveals they were originally looking in Toronto's west end. "We went to see 272 reluctantly, but then, upon entering, knew immediately it was perfect for us. The proportions and price were right. And then [we] found out it was once the home to a gallery! Which was cool enough, but to find out the gallery was arguably the most cutting-edge gallery in the '70s? Even better!" 

The serendipity didn't end there. "Weirdly enough, my husband's best friend's wife is Julie Markle, who is Sam Markle's daughter," Bain says. "When I told Julie we had leased the space, she kept fondly referring to it as '272' and [mentioned] how much time she had spent there as a child. And that is why we decided to just call the gallery Two Seven Two."

Brothers Sam and Jack Markle were artists and businessmen whose best-known light-based work is not in fact art, but the iconic Sam the Record Man sign, made between 1969 and '70, that today flashes over Toronto's Sankofa Square.

What the pair lacked in art-world experience they made up for in sheer ambition and youthful bravado. In spring 1970, they launched the Electric Gallery at its first location, the Gooderham (Flatiron) Building at 49 Wellington St. E., where they had a six-month lease.

The title of the inaugural exhibition by New Zealand conceptual artist Billy Apple, who is widely considered a pioneer in the medium of neon, was Accumulation. Following Apple's instructions, the gallery would toss objects — such as a Bunsen burner or a container of gas — into an otherwise bare room, with the detritus building up over time to create a crunchy carpet of needle-sharp glass shards.

Ten days into the exhibition's 20-day run, Ontario Hydro barged in and threatened to shut the gallery down, incredulous over the obvious public health risk. It all seemed of little concern to the Markles. For the show's invitation, Bain recounts, the Markle brothers "sent out a piece of a neon tube, and then it shattered in the mail, and people opened the invitation and it was just broken glass." The authorities gave the gallery 10 days to comply before they were penalized — a deadline that coincided nicely with the day the show was supposed to close anyway. 

When the Electric Gallery moved to 272 Avenue Rd., things only got wilder. In 1971, Chilean artist Juan Downey installed a working, honey-producing beehive in the gallery's basement. "Going into a dark room with black walls, not knowing what to expect and seeing (real, live) bees making honey in a huge room behind glass (in an art gallery!)," recalls Sam's daughter, Julie Markle, who spent her childhood playing at the gallery. "I'll never forget that."

That same year, Julie remembers experiencing The Works by Vancouverite Michael Hayden, a cylindrical contraption that visitors could climb into and lie down inside. "It was like going through a fantastical car wash or a Willy Wonka MRI, being hit with ping pong balls, rubbery textures, flashing lights," she says. Hayden went on to create Arc en Ciel at Toronto's Yorkdale subway station in 1978 (since dismantled due to lack of funding for repairs), and he's now best known for his 1987 installation Sky's the Limit at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

Children adored the Electric Gallery. In a 1975 article published in the Canadian magazine Impetus, journalist Michael Posner wrote that "in the exact reversal of normal attendance patterns, it's kids who schlep parents to The Electric Gallery." 

A letter from a student of Toronto Montessori School, dated Nov. 20, 1970, is reproduced in a self-published booklet about the gallery from 1972:

Dear Mr. Markle,

What I liked best was the whole gallery. The reson [sic] why is because the people used their imagination so well. The gallery amazed me so much. How did you make such a good gallery?

Love

Andrea Ebsen

"We believe we are the best electric gallery in the world," Sam and Jack Markle write in the booklet's introduction. "Of course, it's not that hard to be the best electric gallery in the world when you're the only one." Made just two years into the gallery's existence, the booklet lists the exhibitions it had hosted so far, which included 35 on-site shows and 11 off-site. They featured visionary artists, both local and international, such as Martin Hirschberg, Norman White and Wen-Ying Tsai. 

By 1973, the gallery had such a strong international reputation that it was invited to participate at the big art fairs in Basel, Dusseldorf and Cologne — where it was often the only Canadian exhibitor present. It also became an incubator of sorts for fledgling arts workers who went on to have illustrious careers, including Ihor Holubizky (who later worked at the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery; the Art Gallery of Hamilton; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; and the Art Museum at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane) and Jo-Anne Birnie-Danzker (who was later director of Seattle's Frye Art Museum, managing editor of Flash Art in Milan, director of the Museum Villa Stuck in Munich as well as the Vancouver Art Gallery and CEO of the Biennale of Sydney).

At the end of the decade, however, the brothers decided to pull the plug on the Electric Gallery and move on. The venture had never been profitable, and the brothers likely felt the need to focus their attention elsewhere. "Their advertising and signage businesses was what was really supporting their families," Bain explains. 

Until now, the gallery's achievements had almost completely receded into the shadows, existing only in exhibition reviews (most of which haven't been digitized), assorted paraphernalia (an archive which was substantially lost to a flood during Holubizky's move to Australia) and people's memories (which are prone to lapse or fade away). But Two Seven Two's project has flipped the switch and re-energized interest in the gallery's legacy. 

Some works in From Electrical Fire Spirits May Be Kindled look to the past for inspiration. Steven Beckly's forever and ever, a text-based neon from 2019 with a photograph of a disco ball dangling from it by a delicate chain, seeks to immortalize the white-hot, transcendent experience of queer dance culture. Elsewhere, two 2024 works by Roda Medhat, whose art is also currently on view as part of the 2025 DesignTO Festival, render traditional Kurdish rugs — curved and draped as if soft — in bands of LED light. 

Then, there is a work that has itself travelled here from a bygone era — one where being "plugged in" meant you were in touch with reality, rather than being glued to your devices. Tucked away in a dim alcove in the middle of the Two Seven Two space, a small sculpture rests on a plinth. Standing upright in a Coke bottle, a neon daisy glows cheerfully. Made in 1973 by Sam Markle, who is now 92 years old, the flower hums and zaps as it sparks a secret dialogue with the eight contemporary works, connecting generations of artists unafraid to blaze new trails. 

Considering neon's notoriously delicate nature, the sculpture's survival is a small miracle. "There's another thing I've learned about neon from doing this show," Bain says. "It works best if you leave it running."