Guillermo Del Toro: At Home With Monsters celebrates all things horror at the AGO

By: Curtis Sindrey –
Follow @Aesthetic_Mag

Guillermo Del Toro. (Photo: Craig Boyko/Courtesy of the AGO)

The Art Gallery of Ontario’s newest exhibition, Guillermo Del Toro: At Home With Monsters, turns the AGO into a haunted house filled with demons, ghosts, ghouls, and the occasional prosthetic leg, and serves as a definitive look into the mind of one of Hollywood’s most celebrated directors.

Co-curated by Britt Salvesen of LACMA, Jim Shedden of the AGO, and Matthew Welch of Mia, Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters brings together elements from Del Toro’s films, objects from his vast personal collections and objects from the permanent collections of all three institutions. The diverse range of the over 500 objects featured in this exhibition—including sculpture, paintings, prints, photography, costumes, ancient artifacts, books, maquettes and film— is simply overwhelming at first glance.

From casual horror fans, to genre fanatics, there’s something for everyone within the exhibition. From life-sized figures of del Toro’s most visually striking monsters, such as The Faun and Pale Man (Pan’s Labyrinth), the Angel of Death (Hellboy II: The Golden Army) and Santi’s Ghost (The Devil’s Backbone), to a seven-foot bust of Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster as well as figures recreating key scenes from the classic film by artist Mike Hill, At Home With Monsters will satisfy all macabre aficionados.

At Home With Monsters is broken down into eight engaging thematic sections, including Childhood and Innocence, which explores the central role children play in Del Toro’s films; Victoriana, which focuses on the Romantic, Victorian and Edwardian ages, which provides del Toro with great visual and narrative inspiration; Death and the Afterlife, which speaks to the disturbing confrontations with death that del Toro experienced growing up in Guadalajara, Mexico, in the late 1960s and ’70s; Magic, Alchemy and the Occult, which explores, the many puzzles, talismans, secret keys and quests for forbidden knowledge that appear in del Toro’s films; Rain Room, which serves as a recreation of a favourite spot in del Toro’s personal residence (“Bleak House”) where he installed a false window with special effects to simulate a perpetual thunderstorm; Movies, Comics, & Pop Culture, which delves into Del Toro’s obsession with cinema, from b-movies to the suspense and horror films of such luminaries as Alfred Hitchcock; Frankenstein and Horror, which reveals Del Toro’s lifelong passion with the story of Dr. Frankenstein and his monster; and finally Outsiders, which showcases the outsiders of society that are often represented in his films and have served as continuous inspiration.

With a new film titled The Shape of Water set for release on December 8^th, starring Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, and Octavia Spencer, don’t miss your chance to get a rare and unfiltered glimpse into the mind of one of cinema’s most revered auteurs.

Guillermo Del Toro: At Home With Monsters until Jan. 8th, 2018. Buy tickets here.