POWER PLAY - painting group show

Opening reception: Saturday February 21st, at 7-10pm. Show continues to March 1st.

Please join us in the viewing of works by:

Jessica Knox
Chau Le
Ron Loranger
Janine Miedzik
Maggy Perry
Caroline Ross

image: Janine Miedzik
floppy boot stomp
40"x48"

DECEMBER 4th: SWIM TEAM

Cynthia Chapman
OCEAN PEARL
Oil on canvas, 30 X 24
2008

Cynthia Chapman

Emerging painter Cynthia Chapman graduated from OCAD in 2002. Moore Gallery Ltd. picked her up in 2003 after showing at the Beverly Tavern. Her fourth major exhibition at Moore Gallery is scheduled for March 2009. Chapman's paintings can be found in private and corporate collections across Canada and internationally in Germany, Italy and Holland. The prestigious Hazelton Hotel commissioned Cynthia to do a series of large paintings for the third floor corridor.

This preview of Chapman's most recent work is a taste of her true passions, medium and colour. These paintings are an insight to her inner energy. Chapman uses a wide spectrum of colours, she is not afraid of and likes to explore radical themes of colour while at the same time appreciates traditional calmer palettes. Chapman is very generous with her paint; she layers it on with a thick impasto technique. The work oozes heavy globs along a horizon weaving in and out of strategically placed tiles of solid colours. Her brush strokes are painterly, yet mechanical; she applies the paint with quick left to right gestures in order to get her expression across. Her compositions are structured perpetually, they possess a strong sense of movement while allowing the viewer to also gain stability and find comfort. Chapman's work is diverse within itself. She has a lot to keep herself busy with.




Alex D'Arcy
VARIATIONS
Oil on canvas, 40 x 36
2008


Alex D’Arcy

Alex D’Arcy is an emerging Canadian artist who lives and works in Toronto. She shows her work in Toronto and Vancouver. Her recent collection of paintings is permanently installed at Nota Bene in Toronto. She trained at the Ontario College of Art and Design and also has a degree in literature from the University of Toronto.

Alex D’Arcy’s oil paintings are urban dreamscapes, architectural labyrinths that hover on the boundary between figuration and abstraction inviting an imaginative free play between the two. Thick, saturated colour swatches float on exuberant, gestural washes creating densely painted moments. In these works, the city dissolves into a picture of airiness, movement and light.








CONCENTRICITY

Ceramics by SARA-LILA ASSELIN

November 21 - November 30



Concentricity




The ceramics in this exhibition explore the interior spaces within a form. My interest is the multiple within the singular, and using concave and convex line to define space. I begin these forms on the potters’ wheel, centering the clay in the traditional method and they progress into playful, eccentric ‘pots’. The negation of utility is not done for its’ own sake but to freely experiment with clay on a wheel. I felt the best way to view this work is head on; so hanging them on the wall is a matter of practicality and a further deviation from functional pottery.

By questioning the expectations for function and perhaps offering up some new

ones: The realm of art, design and craft are linked yet live as a dysfunctional family in the outskirts of town.




Sara-Lila Asselin

O QANADA

SPOOKEY RUBEN

O Qanada - Spookey Ruben

7 - 4' x 2'

1 - 8' x 4'

wood sculpture (stained fir and pine)

woodworking/creative assistant: Eric Nielsen

November 6 – 16, 2008

OPENING Reception: Thursday, Nov 6, 7 pm

O Qanada.

Underground pop legend, Spookey Ruben, most widely known in some circles, not only for his music, but for his groundbreaking music videos, has his foot firmly planted in visual ground. Ruben is currently in production of his third short film for his popular ExclaimTV series, 'Spookey Ruben’s Dizzy Playground'. His latest edition, “Space Package,” features John McEntire of Tortoise/The Sea and Cake. In addition to his love of video, Ruben has been drawing and painting his whole life. He has been conceptualizing his idea of flags as art objects over the past six years.

In ‘O Qanada,’ Ruben explores what happens when elements of a National flag are replaced with something else, transmuting two different things. In examining how a flag is like a human face, Ruben posits: How many clues do you need to give away (i.e. mouth, eyes, nose) to say, ‘Oh, that’s a face’? In this case, How easily can 2 red rectangles imply a Canadian flag? He has always found the Canadian flag an elementary, comprehensive flag, not with "all these miniature stars and indecipherable elements, but very in-your-face", and wishes the sometimes complicated Canadian identity was equally as bold as its flag. Above all, Ruben urges viewers to see ‘O Qanada’ as a visual experiment of the iconography of the Canadian flag rather than a political statement.

As a purveyor of all things candy for the ear and eye, Ruben doesn’t stop with ‘O Qanada,’ using simple wood coloured red and white. The main components of each flag protrude from a white background to bring attention to a heart, or the circle of the Japanese flag, for example. Ruben is always after an eternal boldness. Big, basic shapes have always been appealing to him. His 3-D expression of bold shapes, this idea of big Lego blocks, has a fun, tangible quality to it. Beyond the juxtaposition of the bold with the deceptively simple, there is a surprise element to Ruben’s pieces. Upon inspection, parts of each piece open to reveal an array of 'ethnic delights' (inner mysteries?).

Spookey Ruben is a Toronto based musician, composer, and visual artist. This is his debut solo exhibit. His upcoming album, “Mechanical Royalty” will be released December 2008.

-Kathryn McBride

Portraits of the New American Century

Tobey C. Anderson

92 - 2' x 2' panels, acrylic & florescent paint on wood, begun 2005.
Canadians killed in Afghanistan
Collateral Damage/Iraq civilian casualties
Americans killed in Iraq from Iowa
Anonymous "Foreign Terrorists"

2 - 4 ft x 6 ft paintings: "Torture" #1 & 2, acrylic on canvas, 2008


Portraits of The New American Century
Tobey C. Anderson

October 23 - November 2, 2008
Opening: Thursday, Oct 23, 7 pm


Portraits of The New American Century: Collateral Damage. K_IA, Foreign Terrorists, KIA_CA_Afghanistan
96 - 2 ft x 2 ft panels, acrylic & florescent paint on wood, 2004 - present


As a Vietnam Era deserter from the U.S. Army, Tobey C. Anderson holds a vested interest in contemporary war. As a Canadian visual artist, he has looked to the media since 9/11 as inspiration for the salient details of The New American Century Project, an on-going body of work begun in 2004. Aware of the gaps between the images of the war seen through the media and the actual war itself, Anderson casts a new estranging light on the subject of “The War on Terror”. Portrayed in the RBG colours of the video screen from which the images were appropriated, the dead are lined up and gridded off in a darkened venue. This grid brings a systematic and solemn order to the disorder and chaos of the war.

The work does not encourage viewers to impose their own politics onto the people and events portrayed.
Instead, it upsets the balance of right and wrong and takes us to the core of humanity. Melancholic, but not nostalgic, this work creates a void. The loss is experienced on all levels: the loss of family and innocence, the loss of power, and of faith, but most importantly, the loss of humanity. This reclassification of the dead and wounded is not an attempt to memorialize as in the pictorial halls of fame, but to commemorate the personal pain and collective loss. To avoid sentimentality, Anderson deliberately undercuts these emotionally charged images with sweeping brush strokes, graphic lines and florescent paints. Reminiscent of the glow of the television, the aura evokes a haunting, unnatural tension.

Using the language of the media as a tool and influenced by night vision technology, Anderson exposes the
cultural vacuum surrounding the “War on Terror”. This installation is illuminated with black light in a dimly lit room. The individuals portrayed are appropriated from the Internet and media. Some images have been etched into our consciousness from as early as the apocalyptic morning of September 11th. Although the paintings reveal the popular culture from which they are borrowed, they reclaim and heighten the loss and horror of the destruction.

Tobey C. Anderson is a St. Catharines based artist and Founder of the CRAM Gallery & Collective. His “New
American Century Project” has been touring Ontario since 2007 and will be installed at the St. Thomas – Elgin Public Art Centre November 15 – January 11, 2008. Forty-five paintings of Canadians killed in Afghanistan and Shock & Awe Trilogy from The New American Century Project are in the permanent collection of the Agnes Etherington Art Centre – Queens University.

www.tobeycanderson.com

SISTERS & OTHER HUMANS

PAINTINGS BY CAROLINE MOSBY

Caroline used the Room as a starting point for Sisters. A room, as a place which has the potential of endless possibilities of occurrences. She uses this space to express her thought about her sisters and herself. These are thoughts that are imperfect when translated into words, but more fully explained through a visual language.

Other Humans are portraits of people from black and white documentary photographs of everyday life that Caroline felt facially expressed thoughts that she could personally recognize.

The Life and Times of ISTVAN KANTOR

The Life and Times of

ISTVAN KANTOR

(re)mixed media and performance

sept 25 - oct 5, 2008

opening reception/live performance sept 25, 7pm

Nuit Blanche event oct 4, starting 7pm until dawn.

FOUNTAIN

Director Maggy Perry

652A Queen Street West, Toronto

entrance on Palmerston Avenue

416.955.1318 / 647.519.0420

fountaingallery@gmail.com

opening hours: Friday-Sunday 2-7pm


www.istvankantor.com

amen@interlog.com

The Life and Times of Istvan Kantor is an exhibition of Kantor?s most recent mixed media works extended with two nights of performances, for the opening and for Nuit Blanche.

Employing his accumulationist plunder method Kantor keeps appropriating and reworking already existing images with childish playfulness and neo-punk rebelliousness.? He only works with recycled material, readjusting thrift store art, thrown away canvases, Value Village and Goodwill items, children book covers, art posters, etc. He mostly uses spray paint and china markers to add his signature icons, and for best result he also mixes his own blood into the multiplying colors, red, black, gold, silver, green, pink, yellow and blue. ?

Kantor?s painting technic is somewhat similar to his video editing: multilayers of images added with text, noise, and action based dynamic expressions widening the limited two dimensional surface of the canvases, wood panels or hard cardboards. ?

Kantor never gets inspired by empty white surfaces except when he is confronted by white walls in museums tempting him to deface them. Otherwise he would never start painting on a blank canvas in his studio. Kantor?s working method starts with a quest for images in second hand stores and in the streets. After collecting and accumulating a large number of seemingly worthless kitsch and reproductions, he attacks them with spray cans and markers, working on 10 to 50 pieces at the same time. Throughout a few insanely busy hypnotic days and under the spell of the ghostly spirit of Neoism, Kantor can finish a whole new body of work at once. The last touches include the marking of the exact date, day/month/year, and the titles. For Kantor both are essential part of the final product. ?

The following short anecdote demonstrates the importance of dates and titles in Kantor?s practice. A collector once asked him to erase or change the dates on a number of works dated by the exact same day because for him it seemed like a commercially devaluating mark, suggesting that the artist made all of them on the same day and therefore didn?t put much effort in their creation. Kantor responded with wiping out not only the dates but all of the images as well and then marking the ?blank? pieces with historical dates of revolutionary events for titles and finally faithfully and accurately dating each of them with the exact same date of the day.? ?

Kantor?s solo exhibition at Fountain, entitled The Life and Times of Istvan Kantor, presents action fueled visual expression coupled with skillfulness in decomposition. Kantor?s surprisingly crafty anti-art production deliberately emerges through the autobiographically focused, ironical modus operandi. ?

Ka Wai Foio