New Exhibitions by Loop Artists J. Lynn Campbell and Adrienne Trent

J. Lynn Campbell

Essence and Senses

May 23^rd – June 14^th 2015       

Reception: Saturday, May 23^rd, 2-5PM 

loop Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition by member-artist Adrienne Trent entitled Burden of Histories II.

Essence and Senses consist of mixed media works on paper and wall-mounted sculptures. Situating the head as the primary location of our sensory faculties, Campbell begins by photographing faces of friends, which are digitally altered into dot patterns, reducing colour to grayscale. After printing, these images are further transformed by manually subtracting and adding to the material base, thereby changing what was once a familiar face into an unrecognizable imaginary “someone.”

Change is a constant, inside and outside the body. Sensory functions are defined as the extent to which an individual senses skin stimulation, sounds, taste and smell, visual images, and proprioception. Senses are transducers, converting stimuli from the physical domain to the realm of the mind where we interpret the information. Thinking, thoughts, ideas, opinion, judgment, belief – cogitation is a continuous process of evaluation and selection. Essence and Senses speaks to an ever-changing world that challenges our intrinsic nature, sensory functions, and perceptions of the world around us.

Campbell is a Toronto-based artist who trained at the Ontario College of Art & Design, with independent studies in France, Humanities at the University of Toronto, and Philosophy at York University. Her practice extends from two-dimensional collage to three-dimensional construction and site-specific installation. Her use of materials and methodologies emphasize the working process, recognizing material as tactile image and subject matter. She has exhibited in Canada and abroad at galleries in Ontario, Nova Scotia, Italy, and Germany. Campbell was a member of Workscene Gallery and Artists Co-operative, Broadview Collective (BVW), The Red Head Gallery, The Tree Museum Collective (Toronto/Muskoka), and is currently a member of loop Gallery. Her work is included in private, public, and corporate collections.

Image: P-ID-921-21.01.2015, Giclee print on Arches Watercolour 300g CP, pigment pen, acrylic ink, 22-carat gold leaf, 22" x 15", 2015

loop Thanks : AUDAXlaw     Sumac.com

   Adrienne Trent

   Burden of Histories II

May 23^rd – June 14^th 2015       

Reception: Saturday, May 23^rd, 2-5PM 

loop Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition by member-artist Adrienne Trent entitled Burden of Histories II.

A Canadian-made Victorian dining room table which has been in the centre of the artist’s family house for 6 generations serves as a base for this exhibition.  All 6 generations have traditionally gathered at this table on special occasions to dine and discuss the concerns of the day. The installation titled Burden of Histories II is a continuation of Trent’s 2009 installation Burden of Histories and a dream snap of radically evolving values and circumstance within a 150 year period. 

After graduating from the Ontario College of Art in the 80's, Trent went on to exhibit her art, both nationally and internationally. She was a co-founder of Republic and was a member of the Red Head Gallery in the 1990s. She has had exhibits in commercial galleries such as Robert Birch, Edward Day, Deleon White, Lonsdale and V.Macdonnell; in public galleries including the Art Gallery of Clarington, Koffler Gallery, Justina M. Barnicke at the University of Toronto, Robert Langen at Sir Wilfred Laurier University, and the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa; and in various artist-run spaces; Artspace in Peterborough, White Water Gallery in North Bay, Mercer Union in Toronto, La Centrale in Montreal, and SAW Gallery in Ottawa. She has been guest lecturer at Queen's University in Kingston, Toronto School of Art, and the Ontario College of Art and Design. Her work is in the collections of The Art Gallery of Ontario, CBC, University of Toronto, and numerous private collectors.

Trent has also curated a number of exhibitions in conjunction with both Republic, Red Head, and with Visual Arts Ontario, where she was the head of the Colour Reprography programme for artists from 1994 to 1998. 

loop Thanks : AUDAXlaw     Sumac.com

Arcadia: Paintings by David Holt at Loop, April 25 to May 17, 2015

Arcadia: Paintings by David Holt at Loop, April 25 to May 17, 2015

 

David Holt, studio photo of works in progress, April 5, 2015

 

Bathers as an Arcadian Theme

I find it interesting the extent to which Arcadian themes, particularly nudes in idyllic landscape settings, have occupied Northern European and North American painters. Many 17^th century foreign painters working in Rome (e.g. Poussin, Claude) and subsequent generations of others have been enthralled by the idea of a classical Mediterranean golden age. In their paintings they have further developed the pictorial aspects of Arcadian themes first established in antiquity and resurrected by Italian artists such as Giorgione, Titian, Domenichino, Annibale Carracci, and others.

While earlier treatments of figures in landscapes often had specific literary references (in keeping with the Italian tradition of istoria painting), other artists dispensed with narratives, considering unidentified “nudes in a landscape” or “bathers” sufficiently legitimate subjects for paintings. 

Bathers by Cornelis van Poelenburgh, a member of a group of Dutch and Flemish painters in Rome, known as the Schildersbent. He was in Rome from 1617-25.

Gaspard Dughet (1615-1675). (Dughet was Poussin's pupil and brother in law). Landscape with Bathers, pen and brown ink and gray wash, on paper; 7 1/4 x 5 7/8 inches (122 x 185 mm); Purchased by Pierpont Morgan in 1909.

Without narratives to suggest logical movements or gestures for the figures, however, figure compositions can become challenging for painters.  How does one orient the figures if they are not actually doing anything other than participating with the landscape in the composition?

Paul Cézanne, The Large Bathers, 1898-1905, Philadelphia Museum of Art

The particular ways in which a painter defines the figures' bodily characteristics, orchestrates the overall choreography of the figures with the landscape, and manipulates the paint (métier) become crucial to the sense of the painting and the formation of a visual statement about our human place within the natural world.

Paul Cézanne, detail, The Large Bathers

 Willem de Kooning, Self Portrait in the Wilderness, 1947, oil and charcoal on board, 20 1/4 by 22 1/4 inches

Milton Resnick, figures from the mid 1980s

Jean Dubuffet, 1966

  

Bathers as Nudes; Kenneth Clark, The Nude; Arcadia and Eden
In his 1957 book, The Nude, Kenneth Clark posited three ideas that have been important for me since I first read his book in the 1970s. First was his idea of the nude having become more of a historical form of art rather than just one of its many subjects. Second, was Clark's emphasis on the nude figure’s potential as pure visual design. 

Figured handle from an Etruscan cista, ca. 4th c. B.C.E.

Finally, he drew attention to depictions of nudes, especially from the late Middle Ages and later, whose ungainly or unusual proportions seemed to emphasize the vulnerable rather than the heroic or idealized aspects of our human bodies, often with a corollary thematic shift from Arcadia to Eden.

Adam and Eve, panel from the Bernward Doors, Hildeshiem Cathedral, 1015

Adam and Eve, English Brislington Delft charger, 17th c.

David Holt, four small (approx. 10"x 8" each) paintings from Arcadia, Loop Gallery, installation photo, 2015

Bujinga (Nanga)---Japanese Literati Landscape Painting

Just as idyllic Mediterranean landscape themes were elaborated by later artists from other lands, a similar process took place in Japan during the late Edo era when Japanese literati artists looked to ancient Chinese landscape paintings for inspiration. 

Yosa Buson, Enjoyment of Summer Scenery, 1771

Because direct contact with the ancient models was hard to come by, their knowledge of Chinese painting mostly came from whatever occasional works might have found entry into Japan and also from printed woodblock painting manuals such at the Ten Bamboo Studio manual (1619-33) and the Mustard Seed Garden manual (1782) both then in circulation.

page from the Mustard Seed Garden, a Chinese Painter's Manual, Brooklyn Museum

Although inspired by the Chinese masters, their distance from those ancient originals seemed to have fostered in the Japanese painters a certain freedom of invention. Of course the human references in these paintings are typically provided by figures of scholars or poets. Here too the handling of the relationship between the figures and landscape reveals the painters' ideas about the human place in the natural order. The dynamic structural brushwork used by these painters for both human and landscape elements (especially the imaginative calligraphic foliage) is something that has been especially influential for me.

Tani Bunchō (1763-1840)

Uragami Gyokudō (1745-1820)

David Holt, four small (approx. 5"x 5" each) landscapes from Arcadia, Loop Gallery, installation photo, 2015

Sources

In addition to Clark's book, The Nude, a few other books have been particularly important for my work:

Poussin and Nature: Arcadian Visions, Pierre Rosenberg and Keith Christiansen, eds., 2008

Roma. Naturaleza e Ideal. Paisajes 1600-1650, exhibition catalog, Prado Museum, 2011

Paul Cézanne: The Bathers, Mary Louise Krumrine, 1989

Scholar Painters of the Nanga School, James Cahill, 1972

The Poet-Painters: Buson and His Followers, exhibition catalog, Univ. of Michigan, 1974

Japanese Painting in the Literati Style, Yoshisho Yonezawa and Chu Yoshizawa, 1974

The exhibition Arcadia: Paintings by David Holt continues at Loop until May 17.

More paintings by David Holt can be seen at /https://sites.google.com/site/davidholtpaintings/

Q & A with Jane Lowbeer, April 19th

Q & A with Loop Artist Jane Lowbeer and Moderated by Rebecca Diedrichs : Sunday, April 19th

Please join Jane Lowbeer for a Q & A with moderator Rebecca Diedrichs
Loop Gallery
Sunday April 19th from 2-4pm

Jane Lowbeer         Three Men

Jane Lowbeer                   Man Walking Forward

Adrian Fish and David Holt show opening April 25th

April 25 – May 17, 2015 Opening Reception: April 25, 2015, 2-5 p.m. 

Adrian Fish The Aquaphilia Project IV: Critical Infrastructure 

In the fourth iteration of The Aquaphilia Project entitled Critical Infrastructure, photographer Adrian Fish investigates contemporary municipal wastewater treatment facilities. Our curiosity as to the fate of what happens after we flush a toilet or turn on a tap is limited. Seldom do we think about how different the nature of contemporary urban life would be without water and wastewater treatment. The incredible investment required in increasingly advanced technologies to safely neutralize organic matter in the 21st century requires facilities rarely seen. Fish's interest is in probing the aesthetics of the critical infrastructure upon which we are entirely dependent. 



David Holt Arcadia 

Holt’s small-scale paintings playfully depict idyllic landscapes, bathers, and views of ancient architecture. His inspirations include 17th century Italianate landscapes, ruins, and mythological paintings, as well as late Edo era landscapes by Japanese literati painters. 

A recipient of a painting grant from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation and an artist’s residency at the Ragdale Foundation, Holt has exhibited extensively and taught for many years in the US, where he chaired the art department at Marymount College (later of Fordham University) in Tarrytown, New York. Since 2005 he has lived and worked in Toronto, teaching art at Upper Canada College.


loop Thanks: AUDAXlaw Sumac.com

loop Gallery 1273 Dundas Street West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M6J 1X8 (3 doors west of Dovercourt). Gallery Hours: Wed - Sat 12 to 5 pm, and Sun 1 to 4pm. Artist is in attendance on Sundays and for the reception. 


For more information please contact the gallery director at 416-516-2581 or visit: www.loopgallery.ca

Don't Miss Q & A with loop Artists' Sheryl Dudley and Jane Lowbeer on April 19, 2015

Sheryl Dudley Time and Again

 

As a follow-up to her 2014 show, Between Here and There, Dudley continues to mine generations of family history discovered while preparing for a move. 

A stack of old boxes found in a closet reveal history, nature, and likeness in random photos dated from the 1920s through to the early 1960s. 

While many of the images she uncovered were documentary evidence of events and milestones, Dudley chooses to focus on candid images and casual family gatherings. These natural interactions allow the subjects to shine through with authenticity. She re-photographs the originals and alters each in a way to suggest the marking of time and erosion of memory. Finally, the images are ‘laid to rest’ in a forested setting derived from a series the artist shot in the Canadian Shield. 

March 28-April 19, 2015 Opening Reception: March 28, 2015, 2-5 PM
                                         Q & A: Sunday, April 19, 2015

Jane LowBeer Walking 

LowBeer's new series of oil paintings is a discourse in animating the landscape. A palette of greys, purples and greens, and the construction of push-and-pull render the figure over fields and bush. She plays with dimension; some paintings even wrap around a corner, or read sequentially like a book, as they defy the rectangle. 


This is LowBeer's fifth exhibition at loop. She studied printmaking at the venerated Atelier 17 in Paris and her work has won numerous prizes. Her art is found in private and public collections in New York, Paris, Montreal and Toronto including London's Victoria & Albert Museum and the Bibliothèque National de Paris, France. 

loop Thanks: AUDAXlaw Sumac.com 
loop Gallery1273 Dundas Street West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M6J 1X8 (3 doors west of Dovercourt).
Gallery Hours: Wed - Sat 12 to 5 pm, and Sun 1 to 4pm. Artist is in attendance on Sundays and for the reception.
For more information please contact the gallery director at 416-516-2581 or visit: www.loopgallery.ca