Linda Heffernan and Ester Pugliese at loop Gallery

September 1 –23, 2012
Reception: Saturday, September 8, 2012, 2-5 PM
Q&A Session: Saturday, September 22, 3PM

loop Gallery is pleased to announce two exhibitions by loop members Linda Heffernan entitled Plus 2, and Ester Pugliese entitled False Relations and Fractions. 

Linda Heffernan, 'Plus 2' (2012)

Plus 2 continues Linda Heffernan's exploration of the potential ramifications of extreme climate change and the opposing points of view that make a considered global response so challenging. The textured semi-abstract paintings in this exhibit use satellite views of major cities and snippets of media commentary as a jumping off point to depict the consequences of choosing to explore or ignore the search for a green economy. 

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 OCAD University and her work is included in a number of private and public collections in Canada. Linda Heffernan 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. 

Ester Pugliese, 'False Relations I' (2012)

The mixed media works in Pugliese’s False Relations and Fractions offer up an arrangement of incongruous image pairings and split second variations that layer cultural references, natural elements and imagined realities. Roofs of Toronto houses open up to reveal ephemeral hierarchies; output graphs from Ontario's wind power facilities intertwine with musical notation spectrograms of Italian madrigals; and groupings of fragile objects invite closer inspection. 

Pugliese is a Toronto-based artist who has exhibited her work in Canada and England. She holds a BFA from York University and received the Humber College Board of Governors Achievement Award with her post-graduate certificate in Arts Administration/Cultural Management in 2004. Her work is in private and public collections in North America and Europe, including the Donovan Collection at St. Michael’s College, Toronto.

Photos from Don Allain's show

'anti-gravitational particle acceleration' by Don Allain ends this Sunday, August 26!

Photos by Patricia Njovu

'anti-gravitational particle acceleration' at loop Gallery

August 15th – 26th, 2012 

Reception: Saturday, August 18, 2012, 2-5 PM

loop Gallery is pleased to announce a guest exhibition by Don Allain entitled ‘anti-gravitational particle acceleration'.

Don Allain is an abstract painter currently based out of Toronto, Ontario, (b. Summerside, P.E.I.) whose studio practice and theoretical research focuses on evolving temporal states and overall spatial cognition. Allain explores multi-dimensional contemporary understandings of physical and cognitive reality by investigating various concepts from the frontiers of theoretical physics and neurological scientific research. They both serve as points of artistic departure and are echoed throughout his paintings, ie. (CERN’s LHC, the large hadron particle accelerator and collider in Geneva, Switzeland). Specifically, this research motivates an expressionistic studio practice and style that explores offshoot trajectories of the drip, line, geometry and colour theory by layering many different optical and abstract strategies. He engages in this method as a way of potentially discovering, re-envisioning and collapsing historical abstract wave functions towards new vistas of thought. To translate and articulate this discursive formation he has been considering and maneuvering via multiple routes so as to not consider things in a similar manner while simultaneously opening potential for visual growth. Allain does this via an interdisciplinary blend of art, philosophy, physics, neuroscience, and mathematics with the psychology of colour, optics and perception.

"I have been investigating the drip technique for over 10 years now and extensively as a form of expression over the last 5 years since graduating from the MFA program at York University in 2007. The paintings that make up this exhibition are examples of some of the experiments and discoveries that I have made along the way working in this style. They are formatted to echo and mimic HD flat panel televisions and engage the viewer in experiences of varying optical energies and resonances of hi-def colour, depth, and navigationally diverse visual trajectories encompassed within the cultural phenomena of electronic visual entertainment. Simultaneously, I have activated discoveries from the frontiers of theoretical physics as points of cognitive departure while maintaining an abstract visual vocabulary towards a means of conveyance and invites viewers to engage in an experiential menage of painting, optics and physics. Vestiges of past painterly tropes are strategically employed so as to arrive at a final abstract synthesis that is both contemporary and referential towards various historical abstract formations and artists.” - Don J. Allain

‘anti-gravitational particle acceleration' opens on Wednesday, August 15th, followed by the opening reception on Saturday, August 18th, 2-5pm. 

Image: Don Allain, anti-gravitational particle acceleration - lime rickey green, acrylic on canvas, 44.25" x 24.50", 2012.

Collective Vision Q & A

The Q & A on July 30 was moderated by William Huffman, Associate Director of Toronto Arts Council/Foundation and Grants Officer for Visual/Media Arts and Literary Arts, who for the next 18 months will be taking a sabbatical from that position to head up the Audience and Market Development Office at the Canada Council for the Arts in Ottawa.

Panelists were Richard Mongiat, who along with Catherine Beaudette, founded loop; Libby Hague, who just returned from a residency in Ireland, and Mark Adair, artist and Executive Committee Chair of loop.

Photos by Sandra Gregson

Collective Vision at loop

Loop's talent pool is overflowing, said Globe and Mail critic R.M. Vaughan, and it's none the more evident than in Collective Vision, our current group exhibition. Come in on Sunday, July 29 at 3PM for a Q + A session with member artists Mark Adair and Libby Hague, and loop co-founder Richard Mongiat. The panel will be moderated by Will Huffman, Associate Director of the Toronto Arts Council.

Collective Vision features works by John Abrams, Mark Adair, Elizabeth Babyn, Yael Brotman, Heather Carey, Tara Cooper, Tanya Cunnington, Elizabeth D'Agostino, Sheryl Dudley, Martha Eleen, Eric Farache, Adrien Fish, Maria Gabankova, Sandra Gregson, Charles Hackbarth, Libby Hague, Linda Heffernan, David Holt, JJ Lee, Jane Lowbeer, Ian MacLean, Mary Catherine Newcomb, Maureen Paxton, Ester Pugliese, Barbara Rehus, Rochelle Rubinstein, and Yvonne Singer.

The show runs until August 12, 2012.

Photos by Patricia Novju

Collective Vision

Collective Vision

July 21st – August 12th, 2012

Reception:  Saturday, July 21st, 2- 5 PM

Q&A session:  Sunday July 29th, 3PM
with panelists: Mark Adair, Libby Hague, and Richard Mongiat, moderated by Will Huffman
 
loop gallery is pleased to announce a group exhibition entitled Collective Vision featuring works by more than twenty loop members past and present. 

The year 2000 marked tremendous change for Toronto’s Queen West community. The introduction of loop gallery into the neighbourhood was one of several catalysts that would effectively transform Queen street’s gritty “wild west” into the vibrant, trend-setting, cultural destination it is today. In 2009, loop migrated north, joining yet another hotbed of burgeoning cultural activity on Dundas Street West. After more than a decade in operation, loop’s artist-led curatorial model in conjunction with the calibre of its member artists have allowed the gallery to retain its reputation as a fertile ground for inventive practices and projects.

Collective Vision is a special occasion in loop’s history. The exhibition brings together a group of works by a sampling of loop’s member artists for a glimpse at the diverse practices that have shaped the organization across twelve years and two gallery spaces. “I always dreamed that if loop got big enough,” says co-founder Richard Mongiat, “we would open up the space next door and call it pool.” Reflection, appropriately, is what Collective Vision is all about. The show is an occasion both to meditate on the gallery’s formative role in a particular neighbourhood and to imagine the future contributions loop can make to Toronto’s creative communities.

Q&A with Elizabeth Babyn and Sandra Smirle

This weekend is the last chance to see the exhibitions by Elizabeth Babyn and Sandra Smirle at loop Gallery. There will be a Question and Answer session on Sunday, July 15 at 2 pm. Gallery hours this weekend are Saturday noon to 5 pm and Sunday 1 to 4 pm. 

Sacred Connections by Elizabeth Babyn at loop

Kim Aubrey from online magazine Numero Cinq writes at length about Elizabeth Babyn's current show Sacred Connections, which is currently on at loop Gallery. Offering insight into the process of creation, this article also provides extensive photos of Babyn's work. Link is here. Elizabeth Babyn's show runs until July 15, 2012.

Elizabeth Babyn and Sandra Smirle at loop Gallery

Elizabeth Babyn and Sandra Smirle

loop Gallery is pleased to announce exhibitions by loop members Elizabeth Babyn entitled Sacred Connections and Sandra Smirle entitled Turvy.

Intrigued by Fibonacci’s number sequences, sacred geometry and our inter- connectedness with everything, Sacred Connections launches Elizabeth Babyn’s mixed media ‘Unity quilt’ with ‘truths’ contributed from the general public. The quilt is shown with depictions from sacred geometry and the natural environment, as well as a mixed media installation designed to receive truth offerings from gallery visitors to facilitate the ongoing growth of the ‘Unity Quilt.’

Elizabeth Babyn obtained her BFA in Drawing and Painting at the Ontario College of Art and Design. She and her husband relocated from Caledon, Ontario to Saskatoon in the early spring of 2011. Babyn has participated in group and solo shows in Ferrara Italy, Toronto and the surrounding area, with galleries that include Propeller, Spin, loop, SGI, and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection. She has been a loop member since 2003.

Turvy continues Smirle’s exploration of geographies of otherness, translated from aerial maps into hand and laser cut drawings. These works explore a narrative at the intersection of light, shadow, time, and place with special attention to how navigation and data-capture technologies twist and ‘tirve’ our world view, and how we as viewers are equally subject to observation by others.

Sandra Smirle is a mixed media artist whose work explores how new technologies distort our view of the world, and how we in turn are viewed by these mechanisms designed to track our movements.Smirle’s work is included in private and corporate collections in Canada, Australia and Europe. Her work was selected for inclusion in The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography, published by Princeton Architectural Press. She is currently a MFA Candidate at Concordia University.


June 23 - July 15, 2012
Reception: Saturday, June 23, 2012, 2-5 PM
Q&A Session: Sunday, July 15th, 2012, 2-3PM


Images: (top) Unity Quilt (detail) and Truth Offering (installation, detail) mixed media, 2012; (bottom) Turvy, machine routered plywood, 2012      

Q&A with Lorene Bourgeois and Ingrid Mida at loop Gallery

Constructions of Femininity by Ingrid Mida, Photo by Patricia Novju

This is the final weekend of the exhibitions of Lorene Bourgeois and Ingrid Mida at loop Gallery. In Entourage, Lorene Bourgeois presents her exquisitely rendered images that explore the ambiguity of the face, the head, and the body, disclosed or obscured through clothing, framing and head-dress. In Constructions of Femininity, Ingrid Mida considers the relationship between dress and feminine identity in the armour-like equipment of the female hockey player.

Entourage by Lorene Bourgeois, Photo by Peter Legris

There is a synchronicity in the work of the two artists with the black tulle of Mida's headless mannequins playing off the featured heads within Bourgeois drawings and paintings. As well, there is a unspoken element of gothic darkness seen in both artists work, which unifies the gallery.

The gallery is open Saturday noon to 5 pm and Sunday 1 to 4 pm. There will be a Question and Answer Session with both artists moderated by Peter Legris from 2 to 3 pm.