Aron Hill
Aron Hill currently lives and works in Calgary, Alberta. He graduated from Alberta College of Art and Design in 2000 with a BFA in Interdisciplinary studies. He then completed his MFA at Goldsmiths College, University of London. His work there evolved into installation based projects using traditional drawing and painting methods alongside formal sculptural elements, large format photography and text based work. He has recently been focused on formalist paintings that recall aspects of minimalism and color field paintings though with references to the figure throughout. He finds conceptual company in the late Modernist paintings produced particularly in Canada. The choice of a restricted medium, acrylic ink washes on prepared raw canvas, forces restraint. The work's graphic nature relies on the sheer flatness this medium produces. Aron has exhibited internationally, occasionally lectures, and writes.
Aron Hill
Aron Hill currently lives and works in Calgary, Alberta. He graduated from Alberta College of Art and Design in 2000 with a BFA in Interdisciplinary studies. He then completed his MFA at Goldsmiths College, University of London. His work there evolved into installation based projects using traditional drawing and painting methods alongside formal sculptural elements, large format photography and text based work. He has recently been focused on formalist paintings that recall aspects of minimalism and color field paintings though with references to the figure throughout. He finds conceptual company in the late Modernist paintings produced particularly in Canada. The choice of a restricted medium, acrylic ink washes on prepared raw canvas, forces restraint. The work's graphic nature relies on the sheer flatness this medium produces. Aron has exhibited internationally, occasionally lectures, and writes.
Past Exhibitions
2017 - 2018
Bill Laing Looking Through
November 15 – December 21st
Opening Reception Saturday, November 17 from 2 to 5 pm.
Artist in Attendance.
This series of prints and constructions reflect on the experience of looking and looking through layers that combine to form complex images of nature. Interior space juxtaposes with exterior. Botanical patterns on lace are a veil through which the landscape appears.
In the constructions, scale shifts into miniature: a branch cutting is an imagined tree against an etched detail of landscape while clear plexiglass becomes a reflective pool. These works ponder the question of how we see, imagine and respond to the natural world.
Marjan Eggermont the seductiveness of life
November 15 – December 21st
Opening Reception Saturday, November 17 from 2 to 5 pm.
Artist in Attendance.
Eggermont’s work fluctuates between macro and micro structures and the similarities in pattern, function and evolved form. Work in this series is inspired by local flower anatomy.
Sampler 2018 - Celebrating our Move
Sampler 2018 featuring a group show of new works made specifically for this exhibition as well as works by new artists and guest artists.
The Herringer Kiss Gallery is proud to announce that we are moving to a new larger location this October. After 16 years in business and 10 years in our current location, the Herringer Kiss Gallery has outgrown its premises on 11th Avenue. Renovations are almost complete and we are very excited for the next chapter in the gallery’s continued growth.
The new location is 70% larger which will allow us to bring in new artists and expand our programming to include guest artists and guest curators as well as special large scaled themed exhibitions. The new location on 10th Avenue, in the neighbourhood of Sunalta, has loads of free street parking and a LRT station less than one block away.
Our Grand Opening in the new space will be on Thursday, October 4th from 5 to 8 pm.
The exhibition titled “Sampler 2018” pays homage to our first ever exhibition in 2002. This inaugural exhibition will feature new works by gallery artists selected specially to show off the new space.
The Laboratory of Spatial Bemusement, Tia Halliday & Megan Dyck
September 8 – 29th, 2018
Reception, Thursday, September 20th from 5 to 8 pm.
Artists in Attendance.
(Part of Beakerhead: September 19 – 23)
The Laboratory of Spatial Bemusement is a collaboration between artists Tia Halliday and Megan Dyck is a series of movable kinetic sculptures and dance-based performances embracing a unique and uncanny merger of kinesthetic and pictorial vocabularies; emphasizing design and accouterments reminiscent of 18th century French furniture, textiles and modern interior design, the artists invite viewers to engage in a tactile and movement-based consideration of luxury and hybridized domestic objects.
Cymatic Semantics - Introducing Ben Skinner
September 8 – 29th, 2018
Reception Thursday, September 20th from 5 to 8 pm.
Artist in Attendance.
Ben Skinner’s practice explores the nature of language through the use of text and materiality. Calling on a vast knowledge of materials and methods, Skinner applies his hand to concepts that are by turn ironic, witty, introspective and questioning. His works often combine mechanical production methods common in sign making with traditional materials and techniques such as hand-applied gold leaf and silk marbling. His conceptual practice moves him between an expanding list of media including foil, flocking, plaster, vinyl lettering, plastics, neon and mirror. Skinner has a keen eye for finishes that borders on obsessive, resulting in highly polished works with a quasi-fetish quality.
Ben has his BFA from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and his MFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He lives and works in Vancouver, British Columbia. Ben currently shows with Herringer Kiss Gallery in Calgary, Winsor Art Projects in Vancouver, Mayberry Fine Art in Toronto, and UpRise Art in NYC
HK Summer 2018 Group Show
July / August, 2018
Rotating works by gallery artists including new artists to the roster
Lauren Walker - TA(I)L(E)S
June 21 - July 28, 2018
In her new body of work, Lauren studies defense mechanisms and displays of attraction both in nature and within the human experience. Conceptually this series grapples with the tension between strength and vulnerability. Her pieces combine elements of protective behaviors and adaptations, in contrast with visual displays of attraction. This series challenges the viewer to contemplate beauty in the struggle to survive, as well as ugliness in the pursuit of achieving the unattainable status quo of desirability.
Eric Louie - Semblances
May 17- June 16, 2018
New paintings by Vancouver based, Eric Louie. Eric Louie’s paintings explore ideas of memory, romanticism and escapism through his depictions of abstracted environments. Louie’s creation of space is unique to his style of painting and intended to transport viewers to a variety of intimate places, nowhere specific but rather imagined places built from fragmented memories. In Eric Louie's new work for the exhibition “Semblances”, he is using digital references to create intangible approximations or shell ghost imagery which feel like a virtual reality spaces.
Rhys Douglas Farrell changing planes
May 17 - June 16, 2018
Second Gallery
A mini exhibition of new works by Calgary based hard-edge painter, Rhys Douglas Farrell which ties elements of graffiti and street painting with the minimal op-art tradition.
Fiona Ackerman “Act Naturally”
April 12 - May 12, 2018
Fiona Ackerman's new series of abstract paintings freely mix washes of colour with lose botanical drawing. Titled 'Act Naturally', this series approaches painting as a dance; an invented nature is performed through delicate, deliberate steps.
Eszter Burghardt "Esti Mese"
Sculptures from a bedtime story.
March 8 - April 7, 2018
Second Gallery
"Esti Mese" Sculptures from a Bedtime Story, is a series of felt characters from folk tales, legends, childhood, and motherhood. They travel from a Hungarian forest along the Danube River to the Canadian wilderness of Northern British Columbia and the Arctic.
Renée Duval “Devotions”
March 8 - April 7, 2018
Front Gallery
For her exhibition entitled Devotions at the Herringer-Kiss Gallery, Renée Duval presents a recent series of large paintings. For many years Renée has used the image of the tree in her paintings as a way to explore ideas about a sense of presence and the natural world. Since 2011 Duval has created paintings of symmetrical trees that she paints from photo-collages. The resulting works are somewhat hallucinatory - both resolutely realistic as well as supernatural.
In her most recent work, this symmetrical plant life has been formed into a series of large heads that are both explicit and implied. These “portraits” are iconic in their presentation and totemic in their symmetry. Duval’s paintings have long been characterized by a fidelity to the alchemy of representational painting as well as a passionate engagement to the language of painting. As a painter, she is strongly influenced by both western and non-western art history.
The Photographers (A Group Show)
February 3 –March 3, 2018
Opening Reception, Saturday, February 3rd from 2 to 5 pm.
Featuring a collection of photo works by HKG artists which show the broad range of current contemporary photography. Landscapes that photographed from the sky that look like abstract paintings, multiple images layered with paintings and presented on aluminum, documentary photographs of performance and polaroids are just a few of the examples of work in this show. Artists include Laurel Johannesson, Eszter Burghardt, Toni Hafkenscheid, David Burdeny, Tia Halliday Shane Arsenault and invited guest artist/curator, Mitch Kern).
Transformation
An exhibition of ACAD Photography students
curated by Mitch Kern.
(HK INCUBATOR)
February 3 –March 3
Opening Reception, Saturday, February 3rd from 2 to 5 pm.
Artists include; Carmen Yochim, Brittney Wojcik, Alaska White, Nicholas Tufts, Nicole Straub, Samantha Rollo, Lily Pavle, Quinn Miller, Cristina Merritt, Michelle Lazo, Matthew Kratz, Meghan Ivany, Jessica Huck, Keiran Foster, Haley Eyre, Catherine Deller, Juliane Curtis.
Mark Ollinger - Lines Drawn
New Sculptural Works by Vancouver based Mark Ollinger
January 6 – 27, 2018
Mark was born in 1988 and grew up in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. After graduating high school Mark began freelancing in graphic design and illustration and working at a silkscreen print shop for a year. Mark then started his own project, Duality Clothing, a clothing line that became his full-time endeavor. During this time Mark was painting daily and six years after owning and operating Duality Clothing Mark decided to pursue his passion for creating paintings and sculptural works. In 2015 he embarked on an ongoing body of work of unsanctioned public sculptural installations in Canada and abroad including Melbourne, Los Angeles, Toronto and Montreal. Self-taught, with no formal training Mark now works full time as an artist. He has gallery representation in Vancouver and Calgary and has been based in Vancouver, British Columbia since 2009.
Jason Frizzell - Worn Out Shoes and Back Page News
November 16- December 23, 2017
Opening Reception, Thursday, November 16th from 5 to 8 pm.
Artist in Attendance.
Worn Out Shoes and Back Page News continues Frizzell’s exploration of undefined narratives and uncertain relationships rendered in 1:87 scale. The sculptural dioramas feature imaginary environments, architectural spaces, and miniature tableaus that explore themes of isolation, transition, denial and discovery.
Joe Fleming - Signs of the Time
November 16- December 23, 2017
Opening Reception, Thursday, November 16th from 5 to 8 pm.
Artist in Attendance.
Joe Fleming’s newest work is a combination of post-consumer imagery with a variety of paint applications on hand fabricated aluminum and polycarbonate surfaces creating a diary of observations of contemporary times. The artist’s use of cartoon imagery is a cheeky reference to how ultimately all human endeavours are a parody of the cartoons of our childhood.
Reinhard Skoracki De docta ignorantia
(The Taught Lesson of Ignorance)
October 12 – November 11, 2017
Opening Reception, Saturday, October 14th
from 2 to 5 pm.
Artist in Attendance.
De docta ignorantia is also is the title of philosopher Nikolaus von Kues’ main work which translates to “The Taught Lesson of Ignorance”, which is a paradox in itself. Relating to my sculptures where many questions are asked but not answered with the underlying provocative thesis that true knowledge abides in the consciousness of ignorance. As Socrates already said: “I know that I don’t know”. And Karl Popper added: “And not even that!”
Art can offer great visual pleasure, combining qualities from reality and imagination, criticism and humor. It can create a powerful atmosphere and dynamism in which art and philosophy balance in a new continuity and a new awareness of man’s reality in interacting
2017 Art Toronto International Art Fair
October 26 - 30, 2017
The Herringer Kiss Gallery is proud to participate in the 2017 Art Toronto International Art Fair. Artists will include Angela Leach, Joe Fleming, Fiona Ackerman, Tia Halliday and Nate McLeod.
Curtis Cutshaw - 50
September 7 – October 7, 2017
Opening Reception, Thursday, September 7 from 5 to 8pm.
Artist in Attendance.
This series of paintings has fractured, deconstructed and organic images on individual birch wood tiles, which create a sense of removal of purpose. The images hold a complexity, which evokes visual harmony. Scratched, rubbed, marked, erased and distressed images hint at repurposing and the multiple pieces appear to have a history, where in fact the artist creates them. The viewers’ mind wants to reassemble the pieces and use what is there to create what is not there. Cutshaw does not allow for the accidental. The works may appear spontaneous, yet every piece, every mark; whether it is painted, drawn or scratched, is intentional. The artists’ touch, his hand and his construction are at the center of each work.
Beakerhead Exhibition
Curated by Marjan Eggermont
in HK INCUBATOR
September 7 – October 7, 2017
Opening Reception, Thursday, September 7 from 5 to 8pm.
Artist in Attendance.
Curator, Marjan Eggermont is the former Associate Dean (Student Affairs) and a senior instructor in The Schulich School of Engineering at the University of Calgary, teaching in the area of engineering design and communication. She is also an artist who exhibits nationally and internationally. Marjan teaches graphics, communication, technology and design history, biomimicry, and information visualization. She is currently finishing her PhD in Computational Media Design. She co-founded and designs bio-inspired design journal Zygote Quarterly (zqjournal.org). ZQ was a finalist in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 for a Digital Magazine Award in the Science and Technology category. Marjan joined the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) in 2004 and has recently completed a three-year term on the ASEE Board. She was also named one of Calgary’s 20 Most Influential Artists by the Calgary Artwalk Society in 2000.
Oksana Kryzhanivska is an interdisciplinary artist, who explores the potential to enhance human perception with computationally-augmented experience of sculpture. By sharing the technologically intensified tactile sensation her hybrid art forms speak about the capacity to think with the body. These interactive sculptures communicate metaphors of the body: they evoke in the audience images of the reconfigured human body, its internal organs and raw flesh. These flesh-like forms communicate with sensory metaphors through tactile sensing, electronic response, and mixed-reality environments. In this inquiry Oksana explores technologically-enhanced fabrication methods – composing hybrid materials, simulating virtual textures with electronics, and building machinery and digital tools.
HK Summer 17 Group Show
July 15 – September 1, 2017
9th Annual Art for Food Show and Sale in Support of the Calgary Food Bank
July 5 – August 12, 2017
Artists include Eric Louie, Lauren Walker, Fiona Ackerman, Angela Grossmann, Joe Fleming and Rhys Douglas Farrell.
Help support the Calgary Food Bank through the Herringer Kiss Gallery's 9th Annual Art for Food Group Show and Sale. For the duration of the exhibition, the Herringer Kiss Gallery will donate funds to the Calgary Food Bank towards purchase of emergency food hampers for needy families. For each $500 of art sold, Herringer Kiss Gallery will purchase an emergency food hamper which will supply a family of four with the required food necessities for one entire week. In the past 8 years, we have fed over 200 families! We will also be taking cash donations so please come by and help our neighbors!
The exhibition also raises awareness about the Calgary Food Bank and who they help with stats and facts displayed on the wall next to the artwork. For example, did you know that 40% of Calgary Food Bank clients are children and that the Calgary Food Bank provides 262 emergency food hampers per day? 1 in 3 are laid off workers looking for jobs and 1 in 3 are on fixed government benefits.
Mario Trejo
Accumulated Relics of Arduous Performances of Repeated Gestures
June 22 - July 15, 2017
Opening Reception, Thursday, June 22 from 5 to 8 pm.
Artist in Attendance
Mario Trejo’s works are accumulations of thousands of quickly drawn diosyncratic marks. The amalgamations of hundreds of thousands of marks/circles/ lines in varying densities begin to resemble pocket Universes, each a relic of an arduous performance of repeated gestures.
Mario Trejo was raised in Saint Louis, Missouri and currently resides in Seattle, Washington. In 2005, he attended The Chicago Art Institute of Chicago, for his BFA. Mario received his Masters of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute and was chosen from numerous graduating Bay Area artists to be included in Art Benicia’s Cream from the Top Exhibition, moderated by Kenneth Baker. While attending the San Francisco Art Institute, Mario founded the Ways and Means Independent Student Exhibition in 2008. He formed a group of inspiring art majors, who collaborated with Mario to raise money, designed and produced catalogs and rented and renovated a space for a two month period. Also within that year, Trejo was awarded a Root Division Grant via Mildred Howard to build Birdhouses in the Cohen Alley, which were also shown at the luggage store annex. In 2008, Trejo interned for the curator, Lance Fung, at the Site Santa Fe 2008 Biennial, Lucky Number Seven. In 2009, Trejo was the exhibitions director for the Museum of Pocket Art. In 2011, Mario was on an experimental painting panel, moderated by William Conger. In 2012, Mario had two Museum shows, Elmhurst Art Museum and a two part show at the Illinois State Museum. Later that year, Mario became a global artist with the representation of Herringer Kiss Gallery of Calgary Canada and Koki Arts of Tokyo Japan. In 2015, Mario produced his first solo publication “Mario Trejo Paintings 2008-2015”, later that year he was shown at the Koki Arts Booth in the immensely popular Seattle Art Fair.
In 2016, Mario returned to the Seattle Art Fair represented by Koki Arts, a Tokyo based gallery. Founded by Paul G. Allen, the Seattle Art Fair is the most prestigious Northwestern art fair featuring local, regional, and international art galleries presenting top-tier modern and contemporary art. Mario’s, “ENGINE” was featured as the primary art piece representing Koki Arts in the Seattle Art Fair gallery catalog. From July-September 2016, Mario showed “Machine”, a newly acquired painting by the City of Seattle—Office of Arts and Culture, which was featured in the group, show “Cultural Perspectives Part II”.
Brigitta Kocsis - Contingent Bodies
HK INCUBATOR Project Space
June 22 – July 15, 2017
Opening Reception, Thursday, June 22 from 5 to 8 pm.
Artist in Attendance
Brigitta Kocsis was born in Hungary. In 1988 she moved to the UK where she learned English in Brixton and after two years there, relocated to Montreal in 1990 to pursue her education at Concordia University Fine Arts. She received her BFA from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 2005 and has dedicated herself to painting. For the last five years, she has traveled abroad and exhibited internationally. Her paintings have been shown in solo and group exhibitions in Canada as well as in Switzerland, Hungary, and Finland. She is a recipient of a Canada Council Assistance to Visual Artists - Project Grant in 2010 and spent 5 months researching and creating in Paris and Berlin. She also received a Canada Council Travel Grant and she mounted her first European solo show in Geneva, Switzerland for the Geneva Art Biennale. Her 2014/15-exhibition calendar included two solo exhibitions in Alberta, Canada with assistance from the BC Arts Council, as well as solo exhibitions in Hungary and Finland with the support of the Canada Arts Council.
Brigitta’s work explores the space between representation and abstraction. Within this creative process, she unfolds the implications of structural and theoretical formations. It is a chaotic and visually charged deconstruction between figurative and abstract art where various styles collide and create newfound relationships. The tension between styles and subject matter converge as an existential landscape.
In her current work, Brigitta focuses on the representation of the body undergoing transformation, abandoning formal purity and desiring disengagement from the human condition due to contemporary digital technologies and hopelessness. As a social construct the body is perception: male/female, natural/unnatural, self/other, live/dead increasingly shift. This series portrays something organic and unfamiliar. It stylistically blends realism, illustration and expressive painterly gestures, using the medium as a means to engage with imagination. The painting surface is used for transforming energies and re-fabricating the body with suggestions of contamination of connectivity and displacement, reflecting the artist’s own personal cultural history as a Hungarian/Romany/Canadian. Tainting the paintings with her own foreignness, the paintings are embedded in perpetual rootlessness, as the figures contain exile and otherness within themselves. Through various formal elements, these polymorphic figures are created to confront sexual and cultural categories and are recasting the body as part imaginary and part construct. Exploring notions of the cyborg and the prosthetic, these figures will stand between human and post-human, and will exist between a biotechnological medical body and the sexualized body, the fashion industry and anime.
Angela Grossmann - Models of Resistance
May 11 - June 10, 2017
Opening Reception Saturday May 13th from 1 to 5PM
Artist in Attendance - Artist Talk 1:15PM
Grossmann's new works address the role performance plays in the assumption and persistence of gender identity in a postmodern world. The emotional and vulnerable nature of these portraits 'play' with erotica, using the assumption of the voyeuristic gaze and the socially acceptable expectation of female behavior as a starting point. Grossmann's dramatic and deliberate display of the highly sexualized parts of a woman's body through the raising of skirts, removal of blouses, or in some cases, the addition of bits of real doll's clothing implies a studied reflection on normative gender identity in relation to the sexed body. But they move beyond a simplistic reiteration of submission and exploitation where beauty is definitive of value. Grossmann's emphasis on traditional concepts of femininity through costume and apparel actually produces a critique of such judgments.
Though Grossmann's subjects are not like men, they are equally unlikely women, and seem creatures of an alien sex, parodying both masculinity and femininity simultaneously. Divesting the Madonna, the angel in the house, of her mystique and allure, Grossmann suggests even the most innocent of women are more composite and complicated creatures than any simple image allows. There is a genuine resistance to objectification in Grossmann's women that defeat any simple understanding of 'the gaze'. Her women are confident in their bodies and in their sexuality, they invite glances and return them through expression and gesture and thus contravene the idea of ownership and commodification of the female body as the 'woman on display' ultimately transforming them into potent images of female empowerment.
Angela Grossmann is a Vancouver-based visual artist. Over the last two decades her paintings and collages have been the subject of more than 20 solo shows in Canada, the U.S. Europe and Japan beginning with the Young Romantics Exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery (1985). The Art Newspaper (June 2006) included Grossmann on a list of 100 artists who have most influenced students at art schools in Britain (culled from 11 leading British art schools). Recently her work has been featured in three Vancouver Art Gallery exhibitions including Unreal that showcased her miniature surrealist paintings.
Grossmann's work has been the subject of numerous scholarly articles including: Princeton Press: The End of Innocence: Picturing Her (Dr. Loren Lerner) Le Mois de la Photo: Memoires and Testimonies (Dr. Martha Langford) Hobo Magazine: Alpha Girls (Sean Starke): Flesh for a Fantasy (Danielle Egan), Canadian Art Magazine: Portrait a Toughs (Deborah Campbell).
Written by Dr. Lynn Ruscheinsky - Art Historian
Dennis Ekstedt - Shell of Light
April 6 - May 6, 2017
Opening Reception, Thursday, April 6th from 5 to 8 pm.
In his paintings Dennis Ekstedt explores the luminosity and ethereality of illuminated landscapes and light phenomena by depicting atmospheres, cityscapes and architectures that are composed of many small lights and luminous forms. To him, these networks of lights and luminous forms resemble living organisms. His paintings explore the uncanny and seemingly mystical nature of light, and in this respect his work shares a sensibility with paintings of the Romantic and transcendent sublime - where light is a dramatic phenomenon; a transcendent force and a catalyst for emotion and memory.
Pilar Mehlis - Current Interloper
HK INCUBATOR Project Space
April 6 – May 6, 2017
Opening Reception, Thursday, April 6th from 5 to 8 pm.
In this body of work I am exploring the transformative effect of immigration on an individual by juxtaposing elements of natural and human migrations. Drawing from my personal experience with immigration to Canada as a child in 1983 and subsequent cyclical migrations to my place of origin in South America (Bolivia) and back to Canada I seek to explore similar patterns of migration in the natural world. In this instance I chose the Chinook salmon as it has migratory patterns which echo my own trajectories up and down the Pacific coast and also for its significant place in West Coast culture. Immigration is a transformative experience: it takes the original person and “dresses” them in new cultures, languages, sensations, ideas and attitudes.
This transformation creates a hybrid that often belongs to two places and cultures at once and yet not wholly to either. There is a collision between innocence and new experiences involved in such transitions. My work explores these frictions and the ideas of identity, sense of place, transformation and cultural hybridization with particular emphasis on my own transformative experience from being culturally Bolivian to becoming Canadian and how, through cultural narratives, those two identities are embodied within me.
This body of work focuses on the hybrid fish/human figure I call Antrofish. I use it to metaphorically illustrate the many aspects of the migration and immigration experience and in an interesting parallel it also reflects the “migration” of my painted subject matter into the third dimension where, while it is still painted it stands on its own two feet. Through the inherent materiality of the Antrofish sculpture the work metaphorically illustrates the condition of having more than one identity: It is half human and half fish, the Antrofish is also built in two parts: the top is made of painted canvas and treated papers and the bottom (hips and legs) is made of polymer gypsum and encaustic medium.
The final figure (in sculpture, drawing or painting) is comprised of two distinct beings and while it still retains aspects of its origins (human and fish) it emerges as a whole new individual reflecting in its sensibilities a unique cultural genetic code. The result is the discovery of identity perhaps not typical but of value nonetheless. An identity that exists in the negative spaces (visually speaking) or outside of local culture and which can be reflected on by those who choose to see and explore it.
Modus Operandi
The role of process in the work of
Nate McLeod, Tia Halliday and Fiona Ackerman
March 9 – April 1, 2017
Opening Reception, Thursday, March 9th from 5 to 8 pm.
The studio is the artist’s laboratory where ideas spawned late at night when one can’t sleep, while stuck in traffic or out for a walk, become kindling for a new direction. Research, experiment, sketching, computer mock ups; going down the rabbit hole, is the process of the artist. This is the aspect of the work that takes most of the artist’s time and energy but is rarely seen by outsiders. In this exhibit, we will look into the process by three artists to whom process is as important, a most vital component, to the end result.
Born in 1978, Fiona Ackerman grew up in Montreal. She studied art at Concordia University and graduated from The Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design with a BFA in 2002. She received an honorable mention for the Kingston Prize for Canadian Portraiture in 2009, and was included in Carte Blanche 2: Painting, a survey and showcase of the current state of painting in Canada (published by The Magenta Foundation, fall 2008. Fiona lives in Vancouver, BC and shows extensively across Canada and in Germany. Fiona was longlisted for the 2015 Sobey Art Award.
Tia Halliday was born in Calgary Alberta. She received a BFA in Painting with distinction from the Alberta College of Art and Design. Halliday also attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Ontario College of Art and Design. Halliday went on to obtain a Masters of Drawing and Painting from Concordia University. Halliday has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions and engaged in various projects across Canada and Europe. Her work has been noted in such publications as the Washington Post and Canadian Art Online. Tia Halliday was recently selected as an Artist in Residence at Contemporary Calgary as part of their NEXT2015 Program and she performed her subsequent “living sculpture” performances during the LOOK2015 fundraiser for Contemporary Calgary. Tia is the daughter of the late Canadian abstract painter Richard Halliday, RCA and has recently become a tenure-track instructor of visual art and theory within the Department of Art at the University of Calgary. Tia Halliday’s recent news includes being awarded with the ACAD Alumni Honour Award and the Enbridge Professional Development Award as well as being awarded with a Project Grant from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and selected to represent Alberta in the 2017 Alberta Biennial at the Art Gallery of Alberta.
Nate McLeod is an artist, curator, and arts administrator who received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Alberta College of Art + Design in 2010. McLeod has been involved in the founding of numerous projects including The Bakery (a studio collective offering affordable studio space to emerging artists), Fresh Bread (a print and web-based publication focused on the practices of Calgary based artists), and AVALANCHE! Institute of Contemporary Art (a gallery, shop, and studio space dedicated to emerging, experimental practices). In addition, McLeod has curated several independent exhibitions and is the Assistant Curator of Contemporary Calgary. Recent studio projects have focused on ideas of ownership, authenticity, immediacy, value, remediation, and the role of the Internet and other digital technologies in contemporary painting.
Laurel Johannesson - Hypnos
February 2 – March 4, 2017
Opening Reception Thursday, February 2nd from 5 to 8 pm.
An ongoing interest in temporality has led Laurel to explore the concept of oblivion or forgetfulness. In Greek mythology Lethe was one of the five rivers of the underworld. Also known as the river of unmindfulness, the Lethe flowed around the cave of Hypnos and through the underworld, where all those who drank from it experienced forgetfulness. In Laurel’s most recent work, she has moved from underwater to above water to depict the expanse of the sea in relationship to land or horizon, and human or bird. The underlying theme is that of instances of being in a state of precarious limbo. Laurel refers to her human and avian subjects as The Oblivion Seekers and they are frequently depicted between freedom (flight) and safety (land) with the turbulent sea the uncertain suspension that they must navigate between the two. They occupy a kind of limbo space. It is this in-between space of protracted temporality that Laurel is interested in revealing. She also uses light to convey a sense of duration of time or perhaps timelessness. In some of the images and video, the time of day is unidentifiable …fluctuating between sunlight and moonlight …stars in the sky and sun on the waves. Spatial references are also manipulated ...with sky becoming sea ...and sea becoming sky. The Oblivion Seekers are searching for a space where time is suspended, where they can hover in limbo, and temporarily push memory and knowing into oblivion.
Laurel Johannesson studied at the University of Calgary, the University of Saskatchewan, and the Royal College of Art in London. Her print, photographic, interactive, and moving image artworks have been exhibited extensively in Italy, Greece, England, France, India, Iceland, Portugal, Argentina, Germany, Japan, Chile, Taiwan, the United States, and Canada. Included in many public and private collections, Laurel was recently honoured to have her work collected by the Department of Foreign Affairs for one of their Canadian embassies abroad. Laurel has twice been a visiting artist and scholar at the American Academy in Rome, and an invited artist in residence at institutions in Iceland, Greece, and the South of France. She is a fellow of the Bau Institute [Italy] and has had the rare opportunity to conduct some of her research at the Vatican Library. Receiving an Alberta Foundation for the Arts project grant in 2016, she spent an extended period of time in Greece presenting her work as well as working on the Hypnos project. Her research in the area of temporality, the moving image, interactivity, and generative art has been presented at conferences in Rome, Florence, Milan, the University of Greenwich, London, UK and the University of California – Los Angeles. Laurel is a professor in the School of Visual Arts at the Alberta College of Art + Design.
Rhys Douglas Farrell - Bemusement
January 7 – 28, 2017
Opening Reception Thursday, January 7th from 5 to 8 pm.
Emerging, Calgary-based, Rhys Douglas Farrell continues his exploration into the optical potential of hard-edge colour combinations.
Rhys Douglas Farrell received his Bachelor of Fine Arts (major in Painting) from the Alberta College of Art + Design in the spring of 2016. Farrell was the recipient of a painting scholarship from ACAD where he was also the Representative for the Painting Department and the Director of the Student Gallery, Quoin Gallery. He was signed on with the Herringer Kiss Gallery when still a student and his first solo show was named by Canadian Art Magazine as a “Must See”. He was also recently featured in a 7 page spread in Branded Magazine.