Profile of Larry Eisenstein by the Globe and Mail's R.M. Vaughan

Larry Eisenstein

R.M. Vaughan, columnist for the Globe and Mail newspaper, wrote a half page profile/review of loop member Larry Eisenstein's current show Doodactic. In the review, R.M. Vaughan uses descriptors like "spectacularly intimate", "reality-defying ability", "awe-inducing". (I don't think I've ever read a more glowing review from R.M. Vaughan.) To read the complete review, click here.

Loop Gallery is open this weekend from 12-5 pm. On Sunday, there is a Question and Answer session with artists Larry Eisenstein and Eric Farache that will begin at 2 pm.

Q&A with Eric Farache and Larry Eisenstein at loop

Question & Answer Session:  Larry Eisenstein and Eric Farache
Facilitated by David Jager and Mark Laliberte
Sunday, May 22, 2011
2-4 PM at loop
 
LARRY 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 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/.

MARK LALIBERTE is a visual artist, writer, designer and curator with an MFA from the University of Guelph.  He has exhibited and performed extensively in galleries across Canada and the USA, and currently resides in Toronto, where he is the managing editor and designer of Carousel. In early 2010, BRICKBRICKBRICK, a full-length book of visual poems, was released with BookThug. Later in the year, GREY SUPREME 1, a print-based "project platform" initiated by the artist as a way to collect his short-form experiments with image, text and hybrid literary forms, debuted with Koyama Press. http://www.marklaliberte.com  |  http://www.greysupreme.com

DAVID JAGER has been a regular Art writer for NOW magazine for the last seven years. He has also contributed articles and reviews to Canadian Art, including extensive cover profiles on Vancouver painter Ben Reeves and Video artist Kelly Richardson. He has also translated and edited works for the International Journal of Phenomenogical Psychology, and recently edited and translated a new work of cultural history by Professor Van Den Berg on the Two Laws of Thermodynamics. He is currently working on a book of philosophical essays by his father, Professor Bernd Jager, who is professor emiritus of Psychology at the University of Quebec in Montreal.

Photos from loop: Eric Farache and Larry Eisenstein

loop reopens Wednesday, May 11, 2011 at 12 noon for the second week of the exhibitions of work by Eric Farache and Larry Eisenstein.

Photo credit: Patricia Njovu,  2011

Art Show is open!

I struggled to get the show ready in time, but here is a little image of the back of Loop Gallery while i was putting pictures up on 3 different walls at once to see what looked best together.

These watercolours are painted on a natural white 300lb Fabriano paper which has a beautiful texture and colour to it, the pieces radiate next to the cool walls of this white cube gallery.

Larry and I will be at the gallery on Sundays if you would like to chat with us, I think we will be drawing while we are there...bring a sketchbook and join us.

Eric Farache

Larry Eisenstein at loop

Larry Eisenstein

loop Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition by loop member Larry Eisenstein entitled Doodactic.

Larry Eisenstein quotes Philip Guston,
"...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."
The Chicago Panel, 1958
"I do not see why the loss of faith in the known image and symbol in our time should be celebrated as a freedom. It is a loss from which we suffer, and this pathos motivates modern painting and poetry at its heart."
Statement in Nature in Abstraction, 1958
The resistance of forms against losing their identities, with, however, their desire to partake of each other, leads finally to a showdown, as they shed their minor relations and confront each other more nakedly. It is almost a state of inertia-these forms, having lived, possess a past, and their poise in the visible present on the picture plane must contain the promise of change. Painting then, for me, is a kind of nagging honesty with no escape from the repetitious tug of war at this intersection.
Statement in New American Painting, 1957-58/1959

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.

Larry Eisenstein's work will be at loop until May 22, 2011.

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.

Staying in the loop

The TIAF is over and it is back to regular programming on the loop blog.

Here is what loop members are up to.

Spot On by Sandra Smirle

SPOT ON, a mixed media installation by loop member Sandra Smirle, opened at WARC Gallery on Saturday, October 30. In her show, she explores ways of perceiving place by using "randomly selected locations, translated form aerial maps into large-scale cut drawings" on paper, plexiglass and tyvek. These drawings are hung out from the wall creating a "shifting interplay of light and shadow" that informs what the viewer sees and how the work is interpreted. WARC Gallery is located in 401 Richmond and the show continues until November 27, 2010.

During a recent question and answer session with loop members Candida Girling and Yael Brotman which was moderated by William Huffman, Larry Eisenstein had his sketchbook out. He posted his drawings on Artpost. Click here for the link.

Yael and William by Larry Eisenstein 2010

Jennifer Matotek was interviewed about loop gallery for an upcoming issue of Urbane Magazine. Stay tuned for the link.

Artist Profile: Larry Eisenstein

Thanks to spam filters, schedule conflicts and other absurdities of life, I was unable to complete my artist profile of Larry Eisenstein. But I did not want to leave his profile completely undone and so have "borrowed" the artist statement from his website which has been reproduced below. It tells much about this highly energetic, multi-talented and well-connected artist; and truthfully, does a better job than I would ever do.

I love drawing.  I became a compulsive doodler in public school when drawing pictures was dangerous, subversive fun. My first art project was a pornographic primer/magazine, drawn on stolen school carbon copy paper, secretly printed in the office copy room. I charged a nickel and got into a lot of hot water when my Grade 5 teacher Mr. Cassidy dumped the contents of my messy desk onto the classroom floor when I was at home with the flu. 

In those days, I most truly lived within the margins of my exercise books. I developed a facility for drawing tiny pictures, undetectable to the roving eyes of teachers. I drew monumentally violent struggles on battlesfields in cities, skies and oceans. I inherited this talent for making miniature marks from my great-grandfather whose vocation it was to inscribe the Judaic Torah onto tiny scrolls of parchment paper, stuffed into ornate talisman boxes nailed for protection to the doorways of Jewish homes in Poland. 

I use finely sharpened pencils and 000 sable watercolor brushes when I'm obsessed with detail and conversely cheap rabbit hair calligraphy brushes when fat crude strokes best expresses my feelings and thoughts. As far as my practice goes, I maintain a traditional studio space, but end up doing most of my production in close proximity to the myriad stashes of pencils, brushes and paper located all over my house, These caches are marked by ink stained walls, floors and furniture. Herds of erasers abound in these environs seemingly copulating and reproducing like rabbits. Everyone in my family tolerates my mania and works hard to camouflage the carnage. 


I use color apprehensively. Pencils, charcoal sticks and black ink enable a direct and spontaneous reportage.The graphic element I care most about is shape. I approach color and meaning as secondary considerations. When I spend too much time coloring or contemplating the meaning of my work, my thoughts easily drift off to the next doodle. I try to keep the sequence of cognition in my work as primal as possible by concentrating as much focus, energy and emotion into the stroke, the voice of my work.

To see more of Larry's work, visit his website here. As well, don't miss this afternoon's question and answer session with both Larry Eisenstein and Heather Carey and moderated by Audrea DiJulio  at LOOP Gallery.

Question and Answer Session with Heather Carey and Larry Eisenstein

LOOP Gallery member Audrea DiJulio will be moderating a Question and Answer session with Heather Carey and Larry Eisenstein on Saturday, January 23, 2010 at 3 pm.

This is the last weekend to see the vibrant juxtaposition of Heather Carey's colorful paintings in Approaching Mimesis and Larry Eisenstein's energized and mystical drawings in Phoslogica.

LOOP Gallery is located at 1273 Dundas Street West.

Gallery Hours this weekend are:

Friday/Saturday 1 to 5 pm

Sunday 1 to 4 pm

Heather Carey and Larry Eisenstein at Loop Gallery

Loop Gallery invites you to join Heather Carey and Larry Eisenstein for their opening reception on Saturday, January 9, 2010 from 2-5 pm. The exhibition of their work will run until Sunday, January 24, 2010.

Heather Carey's exhibition of paintings Approaching Mimesis explores perception and how the mind completes or interprets images based on the knowledge we have. Spaces empty of human presence are given character by the brightly coloured abstract marks placed on top which appear to float in front and create an illusion of space. In this series, Heather demonstrates what is possible in painting by the re-invention of images.

 

In his exhibition of drawings entitled Phoslogica, Larry Eisenstein explores the New Biology's concepts of human unconscious processes, morphogenetic fields and morphonic resonances. This work is part of a series called Cellves and seeks to answer the questions: Are the laws of nature merely habits? And can art influence these habits?

Loop Gallery 
1273 Dundas Street West
Toronto, Ontario
416-516-2581
email: loopgallery@primus.ca