Ctrllab set to celebrate their first year anniversary!

Ctrrlab, a gallery on St. Laurent, are set to celebrate their first year anniversary March 6th. The artist-run gallery provides young artists with an inexpensive space to showoff their work.

Exhibits range from video, photography, painting, dance, film to sculpture ... to name a few!

The duo behind the genius, Shermine Sawalha and Eduardo Menz, were kind enough to give us a quick look at the year that has been.

What it feels like to turn one?
The day we moved in, we asked ourselves "were we sober when we signed the lease?" We had two dangling lights, stained yellow walls, rotting plywood pieces for a floor, a wall that blocked light from coming in, carpeting that smelled like a junior high school locker and dust! Oh the dust!

We needed some cash flow to bring our imagination to reality and so the infamous Montreal after-party was our quick solution.

People will come here every now and then and say "this space looks familiar! I've been here before but it looks different." That always makes us laugh.

3 or 4 after-parties later we had enough cash to finish the renovations on an art space that young bucks like ourselves and friends could use to show off their unique vision to the world ... or anyone willing to walk up the stairs.

So many people helped during the reno months and we are forever grateful to them. It's amazing how much bribing can be done with pizza and beer.

Yet, the somewhat-creative people that we are, choosing a name for the space took as long as the renovations did. After the longest thumb wrestling competition ever, the name "Ctrllab" came out champion.

We have had a great first year. The plethora of young talent thriving in this city always amazes us and the diversity our walls have seen has really be fun to admire. We don't have a selection process, as long as there is some sort of creative thought into people's proposals.

As emerging artists, we are still trying to discover our own aesthetics. We wanted to create a space for such dialogue to occur; something out of school and in a professional context.

Over the past year, we have met a lot of like-minded individuals and groups and it's always nice to have chats with them during their time in our gallery. In a way, it's like having a stranger sleep over every other week who tells us his/her secrets or bedtime stories. We only
hope our ears and eyes never get tired.

But please, no more requests for afterparties, those days are over!

We love what these guys are doing and one day the SNAP! Salon will give them a run for their money! In the meantime, check out their site at http://www.ctrllab.com