Studio a mess getting ready for show

An Eric Farache Blog Entry:

Well, Larry and I are getting ready for our show at Loop, and as anyone knows, before a deadline you go a little crazy. Actually, I cannot speak for Larry, but for me, I make a hell of a mess. This morning its taken me 2 hours to get ready to do any work.

Looking at this first picture, the studio looks better than it really is. Stuff is everywhere, sure you have your copies of Penthouse everywhere but you also have the random conch shells, GIJoe action figures, miniature clothing, watercolour supplies, magazines, sketchbooks from the past 10 years and whole lot of record albums as I have no good music at this time so its all Fleetwood Mac and Noel Coward live at Las Vegas.

...its a bit much really.

Here is a view of the wall opposite of my desk, I took down a ton of reference imagery and just left a few postcards. Below that, some paintings which are for the show and small sketches which will be framed for the show.

oh, and a faux Dutch Delft clock plate. My Mom got this in 1985 in Amsterdam, we were let down to see that it was plastic not porcelain- we should have known, my mom bought a amethyst stone in Amsterdam in 1977 and it was a fake when she went to have it appraised. The Dutch I tell you.

Anyways, look forward to seeing as many people as possible on Saturday, please come, we will have beer and cheese.

As usual, thanks to Ingrid for all her Blog efforts.

Larry Eisenstein and Eric Farache at loop

loop Gallery is pleased to announce upcoming exhibitions by loop members Larry Eisenstein entitled Doodactic, and Eric Farache entitled Life Lessons opening on Saturday, April 30, 2011.

Larry Eisenstein quotes Philip Guston, The Chicago Panel, 1958 "...I think that every real painter wants to be, and his greatest desire is to be a realist, in the sense that you want to make concrete, with your material, with your matter, with your form, how you feel. ...if you eliminated the word abstract, made it illegal, like a penalty, you know, to use the word abstract, nonobjective, nonfigurative, then you'd have to really...talk about how different they are. Or else not talk about them but feel the difference."

Eisenstein is a visual artist obsessed with making marks. He is compulsively driven to exploit line in his work. Eisenstein lives and works in Toronto where he is a sometimes teacher, art director, illustrator and writer.

Eric Farache's Life Lessons, is a meditation on childhood watercolour and ink paintings play with fantasy, doodle, GI Joes and 1970s pornography.  Eric Farache’s work utilizes a distinct visual language drawing heavily from personal experience creating a new grand contemporary mythology. Narrative rich, this work juxtaposes childhood coming of age and a frank sexuality. Themes told by blending disparate images, characters and objects lending a Surrealist logic to these highly detailed quirky watercolours.

Eric Farache was born in 1971.  He received a MFA from the University of Leeds, is an Alumni of OCAD, and lives and works in Toronto. Trained in classical painting techniques, he has been working in photography for the past 10 years. Eric works in elaborate sketchbooks as part of his artist practice, he has recently returned to painting larger works.  Visit his website at www.ericfarache.com, or his blog at http://vagabondchic.blogspot.com/.

Please join the artists and author in celebrating the opening reception on Saturday, April 30th from 2-5 pm.

Learn more during a Question & Answer Session with the artists at loop moderated by David Jager and Mark Laliberte on Sunday May 22nd from 2-4pm.

Margarita Macdonald and Maria Flawia Litwin

loop Gallery is pleased to announce exhibitions by guest artists Maria Flawia Litwin entitled Ró?a Selawiska and Margarita Macdonald entitled Border Memory: Crossing Borders.

Ró?a Selawiska, Ja i Moje Dzieci, Colour print, 15” x 20”Add caption

Maria Flawia Litwin explores her alter ego, Ró?a Selawiska in this exhibition of self-photographs. Selawiska’s work is about obsessive self-recording and reflection. She investigates her gender, identity, sexuality and cultural heritage through an ever-shifting symbolic language rooted in Slavic history, literature and folklore. Her intent is to simultaneously uncover and mask her personal reality.

Ró?a Selawiska is a Polish conceptual photographer trained at the University of Plastic Arts in ?ód?. Her work is rooted in Slavic folklore and intertwines political and personal mythologies. She exhibits rarely and the work she shows is deceivingly unassuming. It consists of self-photographs small in size and limited in subject matter. Her images are intensely personal and autobiographical.

Margarita Macdonald, Boundaries, Photo litho, silkscreen, chine colle on gampi, 32.5" x 44", BFK, 2011

Margarita Macdonald’s Border Memory: Crossing Borders, focuses on reconstructing memory. Macdonald is drawn to the landscape between the United States and Mexico and the particular narratives that are created there. She investigates border-crossing issues of identity, displacement and landscape as a place of memory as they are relevant to the border. Macdonald’s interest is in investigating the notion of fact and fiction, presence and absence, historical construction through her own personal experience and those that she has interviewed about crossing borders.  Border Memory: Crossing Borders, is comprised of a series of prints that include various layers of photolithography drawing and silkscreen. Her work has been included in exhibitions in Canada and Mexico.

Margarita Macdonald is an MFA candidate at York University.  She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from the University of Toronto and a degree in Studio Arts from Sheridan Institute of Technology. Presently, she teaches print media at York University, and has assisted in teaching print media and photography at Sheridan Institute of Technology.

Please join the artists in celebrating their opening on Thursday, April 14 from 6:30-9:30 PM.   Their shows will run until April 24, 2011. 

Review of Ester Pugliese's Work by R.M. Vaughan

Empirical Spaces #2 by Ester Pugliese 2011

Art critic R.M. Vaughan of the Globe & Mail included an invitation to his readers to visit Loop Gallery for the last weekend of Ester Pugliese's series of paintings called Empirical Spaces. He says "Like some unformed dream coming into slow but inevitable shape, Pugliese’s works invite, and reward, a long, free-associational gaze." The complete review can be read here.

The gallery will be open today from noon to 5 pm and tomorrow from 1 to 4 pm. Another not to be missed show is Sandra Smirle's exploration of randomly selected locations called "Like/Unlike and other circular decisions".