PATRICK MIKHAIL MONTREAL PRESENTS “THANKYOUUOYKNAHT” AN INSTALLATION OF NEW WORKS BY ANDREW MORROW
ANDREW MORROW
THANKYOUUOYKNAHT
MONTRÉAL
NOVEMBER 26, 2015 TO JANUARY 9, 2016
ARTIST RECEPTION:
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2015
6 P.M. TO 9 P.M.
PATRICK MIKHAIL GALLERY in Montréal is pleased to present THANKYOUUOYKNAHT an installation of new works by RBC Emerging Artist Award recipient, ANDREW MORROW. The exhibition is Morrow’s second solo presentation with Patrick Mikhail Gallery.
THANKYOUUOYKNAHT incorporates new paintings on canvas and paper, and furthers Morrow’s exploration of the continued relevance of history painting after Modernism, as well as the capacity of a critically informed historiographical painting practice to examine contemporary identity issues, image culture, and inherited histories. This latest installation follows research undertaken at the Barcelona Academy of Art and Untitled BCN, in Barcelona, Spain, during the summer of 2015.
THANKYOUUOYKNAHT centres on the idea of painting as an act of atonement, taking up history painting’s traditional characteristics as a public and ethical form, in the development of the painting, I LOVE YOU, I’M SORRY, ETC., a large-scale, invented, landscape. Here, Morrow exchanges the moral ambiguity and formal disruptions of his earlier work for a determined and virtuous language of painting. Recalling Walter Benjamin’s notion of the painted mark as a manifestation of guilt and the ancient Hawaiian forgiveness practice of Ho’oponopono, THANKYOUUOYKNAHT suggests the possibility of painting as a means of artistic, personal, and possibly, communal reconciliation.
Morrow’s professional practice is characterized by a restless desire to both inhabit and extend historical, narrative painting. His work fluctuates between narrative and self-reference, lucidity and indeterminacy, ambition and constraint. Extending from personal, actual, and invented histories, Morrow’s paintings engage broad, historical themes such as war, eroticism, beauty, the apocalypse, and death, complicating these through a resistance to narrative closure and spatial coherence. In his work, fragmented and archetypal figures populate shifting, uncertain landscapes, approaching, but never quite attaining, the sublime. Morrow redresses our historical landscape, inviting us to re-evaluate our own cultural self-image.
Andrew Morrow holds a BFA from Queen’s University and an MFA from the University of Ottawa where he was awarded the 2009 Michel Goulet Prize for outstanding thesis presentation. He was a finalist in the 2004 RBC Canadian Painting Competition, the Toronto Arts Council Emerging Artist Award in 2007, and was the recipient of the 2010 RBC Emerging Artist Award. He was awarded the 2010 W.B. Bruce European Travel Award, the 2013 DAÏMÔN Residency, and the 2015 Can Serrat Residency Support Stipend. Morrow’s work can be found in the collections of the Canada Council Art Bank, City of Ottawa Art Collection, Kingston City Hall, Desjardins Group (Montreal), the Herjavec Group (Toronto), and the St. Regis Hotel (San Francisco), in addition to numerous private international collections. He has exhibited both nationally and internationally, including solo and group exhibitions at: Art Toronto; Papier; Carleton University Art Gallery (Ottawa); Saw Gallery (Ottawa); Mississauga Art Gallery; Sudbury Art Gallery; New Brunswick Museum; The Edmonton Art Gallery; Ottawa City Hall Art Gallery; and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (Toronto). Morrow is a Board Director with the Ottawa Arts Council, an Adjunct Professor at the University of Ottawa, and a founding member of the Strangeloops Collective, a multi-disciplinary visual arts collective. Morrow lives and works in Chelsea, QC.
Andrew Morrow wishes to thank the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec for its financial support.