PATRICK MIKHAIL MONTREAL PRESENTS “WORLDS A PART” A SITE-SPECIFIC INSTALLATION OF NEW PAINTINGS, DRAWINGS, AND VIDEO WORKS BY ARTIST AMY SCHISSEL
AMY SCHISSEL
WORLDS A PART
MONTRÉAL
OCTOBER 8 TO NOVEMBER 21, 2015
ARTIST RECEPTION:
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2015
6 P.M. TO 9 P.M.
PATRICK MIKHAIL GALLERY in Montréal is pleased to present a site-specific installation of new works by 2011 RBC Canadian Painting Competition finalist AMY SCHISSEL. The exhibition, entitled WORLDS A PART, incorporates new paintings, drawings, and video and continues Schissel’s exploration of the role that painting and drawing play in the Internet and Information Age, as well as their capacity to re-imagine the contemporary landscape. This latest installment advances research presented in installations at Volta New York 2013 and Volta Basel 2014.
In WORLDS A PART, Amy Schissel confronts the current anxieties about the role of painting in the Internet and Information Age through the development of a site-specific immersive painting and video installation. It has been Schissel’s long-term project to navigate through a constant technological presence in a data-driven, media-saturated culture—through work that hybridizes painted and digital languages, while addressing contradictions of identity in geo-political relationships. Living in the age of constantly changing new media shapes our understanding of personal and collective history, as brought about by the onset of digital information technology. As the world of digitization continues to develop and our sense of space, and the radical new ways we move through it, are changing, Schissel’s projects change and evolve to address these new spaces, our movement through them, and the resultant changing cultural identity and consciousness.
Amy Schissel’s professional practice analyzes the role of painting/drawing in the Information Age. Schissel addresses the progressively dematerialized quality of digital society by visualizing and mapping information flows that cut through time and space, seemingly negating the need of geographical location for human interaction. She reinvents our contemporary landscape, fostering a sense of civic legibility where the World Wide Web calls us to be everywhere yet nowhere at once.
After completing her BFA and MFA at the University of Ottawa in 2002 and 2009, Amy Schissel was named a finalist in the 2011 RBC Canadian Painting Competition. She was Canada's 2009 recipient of the Brucebo Fine Arts Award, and the recipient of 2013 RBC Emerging Artist Award presented by the Council for the Arts in Ottawa. Her work can be found in the collections of the Canada Council Art Bank, the Department of Foreign Affairs Canada, the City of Ottawa Art Collection, Free University of Brussels, Belgium, and the Gotland Museum of Fine Arts, Sweden, in addition to numerous private international collections. Schissel’s work is currently on view in BIG BANG at SAW Gallery in Ottawa curated by Jason St-Laurent, and she has exhibited both nationally and internationally, including solo and group exhibitions at: VOLTA New York 2013; VOLTA 10 Basel 2014; Art Toronto; Feature Contemporary Art Fair; Papier; University of Brussels Gallery, Belgium; Karsh Masson Gallery, Ottawa; Centre d'art Imagier in Gatineau, Quebec; Carleton University Art Gallery. Canada-wide exhibitions include The Art Gallery of Alberta, Hamilton Art Gallery, and Toronto's Power Plant. Schissel lives, works, and maintains her professional practice in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where she is Assistant Professor of Painting at West Virginia University.