STATE OF THE ART
LINDA CHALMERS
DAVE AND JENN
KRISTOPHER KARKLIN
JENNIFER LEFORT
ANDREW MORROW
JAMES OLLEY
AMY SCHISSEL
MAY 25 TO JULY 20, 2011
ARTIST RECEPTION:
FRIDAY, MAY 27, 2011
5:30 P.M. TO 9 P.M.
ARTIST TALK:
THURSDAY, JUNE 9, 2011
7 P.M.
PATRICK MIKHAIL GALLERY is pleased to present STATE OF THE ART, a group exhibition featuring eight innovative, young Canadian artists exploring a range of contemporary issues and ideas. The artists featured include LINDA CHALMERS, DAVE AND JENN, KRISTOPHER KARKLIN, JENNIFER LEFORT, ANDREW MORROW, JAMES OLLEY, and AMY SCHISSEL
LINDA CHALMERS is a Toronto-based emerging artist who, through painting, explores themes of colour and digitization. By hybridizing the gestural and the digital, Chalmers creates saturated settings of multiple layers that weave in and out of each other, simultaneously expanding and merging fields of space and colour. Chalmers uses a mix of styles and shapes from the history of abstract art and then remixes these moves, strokes, and shapes into freshly moving images. Futurism meets Abstract Expressionism, with a hint of street. She holds a BFA in Drawing and Painting from the Ontario College of Art & Design.
DAVID FOY and JENNIFER SALEIK, also known as DAVE AND JENN, maintain an artistic practice based on co-authorship. The duo seeks to investigate, transform, and subvert traditional notions of landscape painting. With their work, they situate themselves somewhere in the grey area that exists between historical documentation and personal mythology; adornment and nature; and try to find a place for painting somewhere in between its traditional position on the wall and the point were sculpture takes over. Foy and Saleik both received their Fine Art Diplomas in 2003 from Grant MacEwan College in Edmonton. In 2006, they went on to each earn a BFA with distinction from the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary. In 2006 and 2009, they were semi-finalists in the RBC Canadian Painting Competition. In 2010 they were awarded the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Biennial Emerging Artist Award. They are currently nominees for the 2011 SOBEY ART AWARD. Dave and Jenn appear courtesy of SKEW GALLERY, Calgary.
KRISTOPHER KARKLIN'S photographic works explore the fundamental sensibilities of reality and fiction, depicting the environments of his selected experiences, as filtered through his memories. An integral component of Karklin’s work is his investigation into the relationship between the urban living space and its occupant. Karklin holds a BFA from the Alberta College of Art and Design. His work has been exhibited in Kyoto, Japan at the University of Arts in 2009, as well as in exhibitions across Alberta. His work can be found in the collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. Kristopher Karklin appears courtesy of SKEW GALLERY, Calgary.
JENNIFER LEFORT creates paintings that embody a fresh approach to abstraction, and a keen ability to bring gesture, form, and colour together in a graceful and original choreography. Her deft mark-making leads the viewer around her compositions leaving them to question the image’s content. Lefort holds a BFA from Concordia University, and an MFA from York University. She is the recipient of the prestigious Joseph Plaskett Foundation Award, and was a finalist in the 2007 RBC Canadian Painting Competition.
ANDREW MORROW’S professional practice has had an emphasis on the painted medium with his apocalyptic works negotiating the fragmentation of contemporary experience, masculinity, and sexuality. Morrow holds a Degree from the Ontario College of Art and Design, a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Queen’s University, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Ottawa. He was a finalist in the 2004 RBC Canadian Painting Competition and was awarded the 2011 RBC Emerging Artist Award through the Council for the Arts in Ottawa.
JAMES OLLEY’s paintings are grounded in representation and depict invented spaces with altering perspectives, surprising shifts in scale, and unorthodox sight lines. Olley contemplates and develops spaces that are not made up of mere generic containers where people would live. He engages the idea that an urban space is a unique, living, and evolving space that constantly adapts and develops in accordance with individual needs and cultural trends. Olley holds a BFA from NSCAD University and an MFA from the University of Waterloo. He has appeared in a number of contemporary art fairs including Pulse New York, Pulse Miami, and Next 2011 Chicago. From June 18 to July 16, 2011, Olley launches a new body of work entitled I LOVE YOU in a solo exhibition at Toronto’s Angell Gallery. For more information: http://www.angellgallery.com/
AMY SCHISSEL is an Ottawa-based artist whose paintings investigate the constant presence of digital technology in a data-driven and media-saturated culture. They evolve through obsessive, repetitive mark-making, where paint and other media are built up and then worked back into themselves. Schissel has shown both nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at the University of Brussels Gallery, Belgium, the Karsh Masson Gallery in Ottawa, and the Centre d’art Imagier in Gatineau, Quebec. She holds both a BFA and an MFA from the University of Ottawa.
