Upcoming Show: Maureen Paxton and Barbara Rehus

loop Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibitions of loop members Maureen Paxton: Wish Well and Barbara Rehus: Saint’s which will open Saturday, September 25, 2010.

Nine of the twelve paintings presented by Maureen Paxton in Wish Well describe variations on the locket.  Often containing images or artifacts belonging to a loved one, the locket tends to be worn at points on the body where the wearer’s pulse can be felt - over the heart, at the base of the neck, at the wrist.  A tiny wearable vessel, it might then be described as a form of life support, a memory bridge, a circuit or conduit between past and present. In this case, Paxton’s lockets are re-contextualized and re-worked excisions from older paintings.  Ovals, though not the locket, are to be found in Wish Well's three remaining paintings.

With the exhibition Saint’s, Barbara Rehus creates her own series of icons inspired by her childhood fascination with saints and their stories.  Their tales were told to Rehus by nuns who believed her desire to hear the tragic, gory tales was fueled by piety.  Rehus’ painted portraits tenderly explore how people come to put faith and hope into objects and places in order to feel safe.  The risas used as coverings in the works protect not only the paintings, but the figures represented.  Standard saints accompany contemporary icons which place friends and family in their own risas, places where they’ve told the artist they feel safe.  The portraits of Saint’s are painted in acrylic on panel, each recessed within and cradled by a carved encaustic risa.

Maureen Paxton teaches in the Animation program at Sheridan College.  She also writes.  A past member of the Tarragon Theatre’s Playwrights Unit, she is currently at work on a novel, funded by a Works-in-Progress Grant from the Ontario Arts Council.

Barbara Rehus is a St. Catharines-based visual artist, working primarily as a sculptor and painter.  She holds two degrees from Cleveland State University, as well as accreditation from Toronto School of Art.  Her work has been shown in public and commercial galleries as well as artist-run centres throughout North America and Europe. Her work is included in numerous private collections.



September 25 – October 17, 2010
Reception: Saturday, September 25, 2-5 PM

Question & Answer Session: Saturday, Sept. 25, 3:45pm
At loop Gallery with Barbara Rehus and Maureen Paxton moderated by Antonia Lancaster

Canadian Art Gallery Hop stop at Loop Gallery at 3:20 pm on Saturday, September 25, 2010

Photo from Question and Answer Session with Elizabeth Babyn and Linda Heffernan

Photo by Ester Pugliese 2010

Question and Answer Session with Elizabeth Babyn and Linda Heffernan

There will be a question and answer session with Elizabeth Babyn and Linda Heffernan moderated by Catherine Beaudette on Saturday, September 18th, 3 PM at loop.

Elizabeth Babyn’s current body of work, titled Illumination, derives its inspiration from a selection of under painted images depicting sacred geometry, sacred places and sacred architecture on raw canvas. With spontaneous large gestural brush strokes, she allows her intuition to direct her as she navigates her way through the canvas.

Linda Heffernan’s Inadvertent Intervention is a series of paintings that explores the aesthetic beauty in the potential ramifications of extreme climate change by imagining satellite views of Canfield oceans.

Catherine Beaudette was born in Montréal, Québec and currently divides her time between Toronto, Ontario and Bonavista Bay, Newfoundland. Her practice stems from both places where she collects artifacts and specimens to form the basis of her drawings, paintings and installations. Catherine studied painting in Toronto and Florence, Italy and has exhibited her work in Canada since the mid '80’s. In 1998 she received an MFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Catherine is one of the founders of Loop Gallery. Catherine is an associate professor at The Ontario College of Art and Design.

Elizabeth Babyn's and  Linda Heffernan's exhibitions at loop Gallery run until Sunday September 19th.

Review of Linda Heffernan and Elizabeth Babyn on Artsync

Artsync features a review of Linda Heffernan and Elizabeth Babyn's work currently on display at Loop Gallery. Describing their paintings as "luminously layered and ethereal", the review of their show which "explores the theme of fragile and sacred places" can be read here.

A question and answer session with the artists and moderated by Catherine Beaudette will be held Saturday September 18th, at 3pm, the day before both shows end on the 19th.

Elizabeth Babyn and Linda Heffernan at Loop Gallery

loop Gallery is pleased to announce exhibitions by loop members Elizabeth Babyn entitled Illumination and Linda Heffernan entitled Inadvertent Intervention.

Elizabeth Babyn's current body of work, titled Illumination, derives its inspiration from a selection of under painted images depicting sacred geometry, sacred places and sacred architecture on raw canvas. With spontaneous large gestural brush strokes, she allows her intuition to direct her as she navigates her way through the canvas.

Babyn obtained her BFA with honors in Drawing and Painting at the Ontario College of Art and Design. She paints and teaches at her Bolton studio, north of Toronto. She has been a Loop Gallery member since 2003 and has exhibited in Ferrara Italy, Propeller Gallery for the Visual Arts, Spin Gallery, Whitney Gallery, SGI, McMichael Gallery, Caledon East Studio Tour and various other venues in the surrounding area.

Linda Heffernan’s Inadvertent Intervention is a series of paintings that explores the aesthetic beauty in the potential ramifications of extreme climate change by imagining satellite views of Canfield oceans.

Linda Heffernan is a Whitby-based artist exploring themes of consumer capitalism and bureaucracy in an ever more interconnected global economy. She has a BFA from Ontario College of Art and Design. Linda is a member of Loop Gallery and has exhibited her work in a number of galleries in Toronto's Queen West district as well as Whitby's Station Gallery and The Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa.

August 28 - September 19, 2010
Reception: Saturday, September 11th, 2 - 5 pm

Question & Answer Session: Saturday September 18, 3 pm

Moderated by Catherine Beaudette.

Save the Date - Sunday, October 17, 2010

Save October 17, 2010 on your calendar. Loop Gallery is planning a fabulous fundraiser at Lula Lounge in Toronto.  The doors will open at 7 pm. At 8 pm, a concert will begin with great music performed by Aaron Davis, Jonathan Goldsmith and friends. Following the concert, there will be dancing for the remainder of the evening (from approximately 930 pm until 11 pm).  

Tickets are $30 each and are available through Loop Gallery or from any Loop Gallery member.

Interview with Alistair Magee by Otino Corsano

To read Otino Corsano's interview with Alistair Magee about his work in loop's current exhibition Faithful and Faithless Messengers, click here.

Photos from the Opening Reception for Faithful and Faithless Messengers

Photo credits: Ester Pugliese, 2010

loop Gallery presents Faithful and Faithless Messengers

Faithful and Faithless Messengers 

   

Mark Adair

Catherine Daigle

Patrick Jenkins

Alistair Magee

Mary Catherine Newcomb

Rochelle Rubinstein

 

August 11 - 22, 2010
Reception: Thursday, August 12th, 6 - 9 pm

  

loop Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition entitled Faithful and Faithless Messengers by Mark Adair, Catherine Daigle, Patrick Jenkins, Alistair Magee, Mary Catherine Newcomb and Rochelle Rubinstein. The exhibition addresses the dual nature of the artist as both messenger and art historian aware of the long history of messengers in art, be it The Virgin Mary, The Lord of the Flies, The Redeeming Angel, or just  language itself  "... lost in a sea of paint."  Works range from sculpture, printmaking and painting through to animated film.

Mark Adair:  “After my father died my mother told me that she wanted an angel for her tombstone. Now angels are not rare in art history so I did my due diligence and tried to figure out what one would look like. Then I found a slab of marble in the ruins of an old insane asylum and chipped and scraped away at it for about a decade on and off until I came up with this piece. The style comes from a Sumerian cylinder seal I saw in The Louvre. Perhaps angels were still around then as the Mesopotamians were closer to the beginning of time.”  


Catherine Daigle:  Between 2001 and her death in 2006, Catherine Daigle did a number of works using insects and stenciled images of flies. The little piece in this show Hissing for Flies was by inspired by Isaiah 7:18 (in the Old Testament), "And it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord will whistle for the fly". Daigle made works on acetate, plexiglass, and paper that were suggestive of clouds of flies, a phenomenon most us associate with foreboding.

Patrick Jenkins:  In this exhibition Jenkins presents two films along with Giclèe prints of some of the individual paintings created in the making of the movies. Labyrinth is a surrealistic mystery in which a detective encounters strange phenomena and beings from the afterlife. Towers Rising, an animated film loop, was created spontaneously, and in retrospect, Jenkins realizes it was a response to 9/11. Jenkins’ work explores the journey of the spirit through life, the imagination, and in Towers Rising, a desire for gentleness in a post 9/11 world.


Alistair Magee:  The technique employed to make these paintings involves repetitive stenciling of written language used as a system or grid to support more expressive brushwork. Palimpsest is central to the work. In all of his work since 2000, Magee has attempted to unmoor legibly meaningful but formulaic language and pull it back into the realm of abstraction. The stasis of inscription is released to ambiguity in a sea of paint.

Mary Catherine Newcomb:  Assumption of the Virgin 1996. “I have always been interested in the relationship between the spiritual and the corporeal, partly because I was raised to think that there wasn't one and partly because I am a sculptor. This piece plays off the Catholic feast of the Assumption (celebrated August 15th) when the BVM was bodily received into heaven. There is an intellectual debate as to whether she died before the ascension or was vacuumed up just as she was about to die - I can't see that it matters as she was only dead for a bit. Assumption can be an active or passive verb - meaning two different things... the gesture of the legs suggests questions about the relationship between the body and the sacred. The beeswax refers to, and smells like, Catholic church candles of my childhood. Beeswax has also been used to sculpt bodies over the bones of the saints – i.e. flesh out relics. The piece is cast from my own body and the legs are hollow.”

Rochelle Rubinstein:  Over & Above is the newest addition to an ongoing project called Marginalia, which consists of hundreds of printed, painted and carved wood panels. It was originally inspired by the 16th century codices of Mexico. When the Spanish army of Cortez converted the Aztecs to "the true faith" at sword point, it was under a banner bearing an image of the Virgin Mary. In Over and Above, a blond Mary holds her boy, surrounded by archangels and messengers and by the Hebrew phrase, "And his banner over me was love" (Songs of Songs in the Old Testament). It is a riff on The Book of Kells, the 7th to 9th century Irish manuscript codex. Images of woman, boy, angels, stones, babies, and words have been printed and over-printed on the four large wood panels. This repetition leads to variation and invites reflection.


Please join the artists in celebrating the opening reception on Thursday, August 12th from 6-9 pm. 

Question and Answer Session with Eric Farache

Loop Gallery is hosting a Question & Answer session with Eric Farache moderated by David Jager on Saturday, August 7th at 3pm.

 
Eric Farache's's exhibition of large format photography at loop Gallery, titled Manifest Dream, is an investigation into the convergence of time, image and memory through richly layered multiple exposures. Farache works with layered images all created in-camera, not digitally. Through exposures, reference points are created and strung together, creating a whole new reference point based on a very personal visual language.

Throughout Farache's practice, his work has consistently focused on the passage of time - capturing moments in history as well as place. Eric is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art & Design (1994) in Fine Art and the University of Leeds where he earned his Masters in Fine Arts (2000). He often expresses his ideas in photography, sometimes utilizing the cheap and sensationalistic Holga camera.

David Jager has been a regular Art writer for NOW magazine for the last six 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.

Eric Farache's Manifest Dream & Isabelle Hémard's Fuzzy, Furry and Cloudy exhibitions at loop Gallery run until Sunday August 8th.