Thursday, April 29, 2010

Lanny Shereck at Loop Gallery




Lanny Shereck's exhibition entitled In Between is currently on display at Loop Gallery. This new body of work started as a search for in between spaces where people don’t tend to look.  Shereck noticed the spaces between buildings on the side streets of the Lower Annex where he lives and works. These spaces revealed a hidden world of garages, gardens, coach houses, fences and the flotsam of domestic life. Some of Shereck’s early work – particularly the Pedestrian series – dealt with the theme of watching and targeting individuals as they went about their business on the streets of Toronto; this new work is also a bit intrusive and odd. Shereck walks close to private homes, and takes pictures of these less public, more private spaces; often experiencing the same discomfort he did when taking people’s photographs on the street without permission.

What has drawn Shereck to these particular images, aside from the narrative concerns of public and private spaces, are formal concerns of design, colour and light. As a painter and sculptor, Shereck brings together the constructive nature of sculpture with questions about the nature of painting.  Using collage as a way to construct a painting with wood and board pieces of flat shape and colour, Shereck creates a relief with the painterly effect of close up abstraction; upon standing back, the image both flattens and gains clarity.

Another aspect of this new work is the repetition of images. The spaces are all different and although they share many common features, each one is a unique and real space built around a shared social, environmental, and architectural setting.  Each space can be interpreted formally and narratively in a unique way.

Lanny Shereck is an artist and art teacher working in acrylic and oil paint and using photographic collage to create images of urban life in Toronto, Montreal, Havana and Mexico City.  Shereck’s work, although based in realism, explores the relationship between perception and abstraction. This is expressed through the experience of standing close to the work and seeing formal shapes and colours and then standing back from the work and seeing the emerging image come into focus.  Shereck has been a member of Loop for three years and is represented by The Fran Hill Gallery in Toronto. Shereck has been an art educator for thirty years teaching painting, sculpture, drawing, ceramics and art history.

Lanny Shereck will speak about his work during a Question & Answer Session at the gallery on Saturday, May 8th at 3pm. 



Friday, April 23, 2010

Gone Missing by Yvonne Singer



Gone Missing is an installation by Yvonne Singer which consists of two elements; a series of neon sentences and a video travelogue with images from Paris, Venice, Berlin and London.

Through a series of sentence fragments produced in neon, and the flashing images of travel, Gone Missing suggests narratives of memory, loss and longing. The words produced in neon and the impressionistic wordless images of travel express the ephemeral and fragmented nature of memory. They allude to clues to an unrevealed mystery about personal identity. The use of neon to represent conversational language reflects Singer's interest in language and subjectivity. Together with the rapidly flashing images of travel, these two elements of the installation investigate the construction of memory and place. There is an inherent tension between the iconic postcard travel images, the familiarity of the neon sign as the language of advertising and the private thoughts suggested in Gone Missing.

Yvonne Singer is a practicing artist with an active national and international exhibition record. Her installation works employ multimedia techniques, often with cryptic texts to articulate cultural issues of disjuncture and perception. She is particularly interested in the intersection of public and private histories.  Exhibitions include sometimes I like a happy ending; sometimes I like a sad ending (Kiwi Sculpture Garden, Perth Ontario) random objects:random thoughts (Akau gallery, Toronto), Signs of Life; an intimate portrait of someone I don't know (Loop Gallery, Toronto), The Trouble with Translation (tour - Germany, France, Canada), Alphabets (Stewart Hall, Montreal), Crossroad (Visual Art Centre, Clarington), Staging Memory (Montreal Holocaust Centre), The Veiled Room (ACC Galerie, Weimar, Germany), Images of Girlhood (McCord Museum, Montreal). She has received several public art commissions and her work is found in many private collections. She has served on the boards of the Koffler centre for the Arts, Toronto Arts Council and C Magazine.

Professor Singer is tenured faculty in the Department of Visual Arts, York University and was Graduate Program Director in Visual Arts from 2003-2009. She is currently on sabbatical.

Please join the artist tomorrow Saturday, April 24th from 2-5pm at Loop Gallery.

Yvonne Singer will also speak about her work during a Question and Answer Session facilitated by Bill Huffman at Loop Gallery on Saturday May 8th at 3pm.

This exhibition will continue at Loop Gallery until May 16, 2010.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Lanny Shereck and Yvonne Singer at Loop Gallery



Loop Gallery is pleased to announce exhibitions by loop members Lanny Shereck entitled In Between and Yvonne Singer entitled Gone Missing.

Lanny Shereck’s In Between is a new series started as a search for in between spaces where people don’t tend to look.  These spaces revealed a hidden world of garages, gardens, coach houses, fences and the flotsam of domestic life.  Some of Shereck’s early work dealt with the theme of documenting individuals as they went about their business on the streets of Toronto; this new work is also a bit intrusive and odd. Shereck walks close to private homes, and takes pictures of these less public spaces; often experiencing the same discomfort he did when taking people’s photographs on the street without permission.

Lanny Shereck is an artist and art teacher working in acrylic and oil paint and photographic collage to create images of urban life.  Shereck has been a member of Loop for three years and is represented by The Fran Hill Gallery in Toronto. Shereck has been an art educator for 30 years.

Yvonne Singer's exhibition Gone Missing is an installation consisting of two elements; a series of neon sentences and a video travelogue with images from Paris, Venice, Berlin and London.

Through a series of sentence fragments produced in neon, and the flashing images of travel, Gone Missing suggests narratives of memory, loss and longing. The words produced in neon and the impressionistic wordless images of travel express the ephemeral and fragmented nature of memory. They allude to clues to an unrevealed mystery about personal identity. The use of neon to represent conversational language reflects Singer's interest in language and subjectivity.  There is an inherent tension between the iconic postcard travel images, the familiarity of the neon sign as the language of advertising and the private thoughts suggested in Gone Missing.

Yvonne Singer is a practicing artist with an active national and international exhibition record.  Professor Singer is tenured faculty in the Department of Visual Arts, York University and was Graduate Program Director in Visual Arts from 2003-2009. She is currently on sabbatical.

Please join the artists in celebrating the opening reception on Thursday, April 22nd from 6-8 pm.  Yvonne Singer will be present on Saturday, April 24th from 2 – 5 pm.   Lanny Shereck and Yvonne Singer will speak about their work in a Question and Answer Session on Saturday, May 8th at 3pm.  

Monday, April 19, 2010

Video Clip from the Conversation with Mark Adair and Mary Catherine Newcomb

The gallery is closed this week for installation and it will no longer be possible to see the beautiful work of Mark Adair and Mary Catherine Newcomb. However, there is an enlightening video clip of the Question and Answer session with Mark and Mary Catherine which was facilitated by Gordon Hatt.

Listen to this four minute clip and learn more about the artistic process. Click on the Vimeo link here.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Daphne and Apollo



Today is the last day to see this extraordinary sculpture by Mark Adair called Daphne and Apollo. When I saw this, I marveled at Mark's incredible skill at making wood come alive.

Loop Gallery is open today from 1 to 4 pm. Also on view are Mark's drawings and Mary Catherine Newcomb's magical bunny sculpture called Chocolate.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Mark Adair & Mary Catherine Newcomb in conversation with Gordon Hatt.

Join us at Loop Gallery TODAY Saturday April 17th for a Question and Answer session at 3pm. Gordon Hatt will facilitate the discussion with Mark Adair and Mary Catherine Newcomb.

Mark Adair is a Toronto artist who does charcoal works on paper and makes sculpture. His work was recently featured in the Patrick Jenkins documentary, Death Is In Trouble Now, airing on BRAVO! Television, which was also the basis for a 25-year retrospective of Adair's work mounted at Brock University's Rodman Hall Arts Centre. Adair is a graduate of York University, Toronto (BFA 1979) and the University of Victoria (MFA 1982). He is a founding member of the Torontoniensis Collective with whom he has exhibited since the mid 1990's. He has exhibited with Loop since 2004.

Mary Catherine Newcomb was born and raised in Montreal. She received her art education at University of Waterloo and York University. She currently works and resides in Kitchener, Ontario. She has received numerous grants and awards and her work has been exhibited internationally.

Gordon Hatt is an independent arts writer and curator living in Kitchener, Ontario. He was the Director/Curator at Rodman Hall Arts Centre in St. Catharines from 2004 to 2007 and before that the Curator of Temporary Exhibitions at Cambridge Galleries, Cambridge Ontario.

Mark Adair's Death's Children & Mary Catherine Newcomb's Chocolate exhibitions run until Sunday April 18th. Gallery hours are:  Saturday, April 17th 1-5pm and Sunday, April 18th 1-4pm

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Mark Adair on Artists and Art Critics

As artists we have, it seems to me, two distinct jobs. One is making art, and as Catherine Daigle used to say, "... an artist can only make the art they make." And the other job is "getting it out there". What Daigle meant was that the struggle of art production is very personal. And as Michel Denis, a Montreal artist, said to me many years ago, it's that idiosyncratic voice that is what makes a thing special (to paraphrase). I can paint a vase of sunflowers, but Van Gogh paints a Vase of Sunflowers. It's not perhaps 'better', but somehow it is just better. In "getting it out there", we stretch out our necks only to expose ourselves to the sharp sword of the critic.

The critic's sword has two edges. One cuts for the artist, and the other slices into the artist. In speaking with a colleague the other day I learned that she has felt the sting of a reviewer. Not a bad review at all, just one simple word that made her wonder about an aspect of her work. Should it be seen this way, or that way? A semantic twist that can twist one's understanding. I have really felt the sting of the reviewer's pen to the extent that it made me wonder what the hell (at the very core of my being) I was up to. You might say that it's a nice problem to have and I would concur, but with caution. What real use is a review other than the undeniable pleasure of seeing one's name in ink? It has been suggested that a good review can give the reader (collector) confidence to perhaps make a purchase. Well, that is a very important part of our business. But I would argue that arts writers, and I have had the very real pleasure of working with several good ones, have a raison d'etre all of their own. Not separate from artists but joined at the hip so to speak. Arts writers and arts journalists wield their wicked little pens (cameras and computers, blogs and magazines) to write into existence their own cultural visions. Think about the implications of a 'simple'  review. For every show chosen by the reviewer there are hundreds ignored. That's a lot of resentment. But more to the point the selection process of arts journalists underscores how this one aspect of arts culture works; certain shows are chosen to be written about. Certain artists are brought to the public's attention. A discourse is established. As artists we tend to whine about the tail wagging the dog. I think this whining might might be a big mistake. The fact is that we are a small part of a very big cultural industry. When I get reviewed these days, or someone flatters me by noticing my efforts, (with praise, faint praise, or even mild ridicule) I try to remember my place in the food chain. The region of south western ontario is a great place to be an arts worker. Everything is up for grabs; anything can happen. We are very blessed.

Mark Adair

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Interview with Gary Clement

Loop Gallery member Gary Clement is featured on a cool website Ya es Hoy from Argentina.
His profile begins as follows:
"I am an illustrator and cartoonist from Toronto, Canada. I live with my wife, son and daughter (she is studying in Montreal now). Also reside with a dog and a cat. Making art is the only thing I wanted to do and the only (legal) thing I was any good at. The private school I went to growing up had no art at all, NONE, and boys who drew were considered… shall we say, less masculine. I was a closet artist. So when I finally got to a place where drawing and painting were the only things expected of me, I was very, very happy." 

To read more, click here.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

Gary Michael Dault Reviews the Current Show at Loop Gallery



Art critic Gary Michael Dault has written a review in today's Globe and Mail Newspaper of the current show of Mary Catherine Newcomb's and Mark Adair's work at LOOP Gallery. His review is called "A bunny with a chemical scent and a hint of myth" and can be read here.

Of Mary Catherine's Newcomb's hand sculpted rabbit, Dault says "Stretched out on its bed of crushed stone, Newcomb's chocolaty rabbit looks like a victim - like a creature sacrificed, as both primitive rituals and the story of Jesus's death, rebirth and scension would have it,  in order to bring about the re-emergence of new life. In Newcomb's skillful hands, it's no distance at all from the low comedy of her mucking about in an animal feed bin to the generation of myth. Her bunny may be made of ignoble stuff, but it has about it an aura of sanctity."

Dault also offers high praise to Mark Adair's work calling them "brilliantly spooky" and comparing his "tiny, astonishingly detailed charcoal drawings" to Hans Holbein's Dance of Death woodcuts from 1538.

The exhibition by Mary Catherine Newcomb and Mark Adair continues at Loop Gallery until Sunday, April 18, 2010.