Graeme Skelton, detail of Hidden Layer #8 (Heap), 2018.
Framed Spaces is an exhibition of works featuring artists based both regionally and across Canada. These works juxtapose and compliment each other simultaneously, allowing the viewer to develop a nuanced understanding of contemporary painting practices.
Opening Reception: Friday, September 7th, 7 pm at Artcite Inc.
Works by Scott Bertram (Comox, BC), Dean Carson (Windsor, ON), Jason Deary (Toronto, ON), Sarah Pupo (Montréal, QC), Graeme Skelton (Windsor, ON),
Scott Bertram is an abstract painter whose practice centres around ideas of improvisation, finding meaning within unintended stimuli, and playing with the dynamics of perception. He often begins his paintings by using multiple tools and processes that he doesn’t have complete control over, which ultimately create tensions among the connections of the ambiguous forms. He has a BFA from the University of British Columbia Okanagan and an MFA from NSCAD University. He was a semi-finalist in the 12th RBC Canadian Painting Competition and has received many other awards. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at Two Rivers Art Gallery in Prince George, BC; Forest City Gallery in London, ON; and Galerie BAC in Montreal, QC; as well as in group exhibitions at The Power Plant in Toronto, ON; Dalhousie Art Gallery in Halifax, NS; and the Art Gallery of Calgary, among other exhibitions in the USA, Australia, Germany, Mexico, and the UK. Scott Bertram currently lives and works in Comox on Vancouver Island, British Columbia.
Dean Carson‘s work focuses on specific details relating to architectural and interior spaces and how they correspond to the overall environment, such as the specific patterns that function as exterior and interior elements. The empty spaces function as indicators to a place largely devoid of human activity or interest. Particular viewpoints stress the hermetic aspect of the interior spaces, as anonymous places of privacy we inhabit in our daily lives. Carson has shown at many arts spaces in Windsor including Artcite, Common Ground, SB Contemporary and the Art Gallery of Windsor.
Jason Deary is a visual artist with an MFA from OCAD University and a BFA from the University of Windsor. He makes abstract paintings that represent an investigation of fragmented memory through a wide variety of adopted and invented painting languages and an exhaustive exploration of techniques. Jason is interested in how we can hold onto, reveal and record memories of the past in order to understand the present and imagine our future. His paintings explore balancing presence against absence, confusion against clarity and trying to collect what they can while also demonstrating (and accepting) loss. Jason was a work study candidate at the Banff Centre and has had multiple exhibitions across Canada: FIELD Contemporary in Vancouver, Avalanche Institute of Contemporary Art in Calgary, MULHERIN in Toronto, Forest City Gallery in London and Idea Exchange in Cambridge. He is currently represented by Birch Contemporary in Toronto where his solo show, “Drawing Clocks” opens in October . Deary was a recent recipient of grants from Toronto Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts. He lives and works in Toronto.
Sarah Pupo lives and works in Montréal, Quebec. Her practice bridges watercolour painting, drawing, provisional installation, and lo-fi animation. Sarah uses the rehearsed daily action of drawing (sitting down in a particular place, using a set of special objects) and the slowed down time of animating to open up a middle space where it is possible to look and sense in a different way. Dream, emotion, memory, coincidence, fantasy (all that can’t be thought through in a linear manner) are addressed more easily through these rituals of making. Sarah’s recent projects include solo exhibitions at the ODD Gallery (Dawson City, YK) and Art Metropole (Toronto, ON) and a collaborative exhibition/residency at Eastern Edge (St. John’s, NL). She is the recent recipient of the Brucebo Scholarship (Canada/Sweden) and the Quebec Council for the Arts Studio in Mumbai, India.
Graeme Skelton was born in Windsor, Ontario, in 1989. Graeme’s view of his work: “When considering ruptures in the visual framework of a painting, I am reminded of Francis Bacon’s ‘curtains’ of streaks. The streaks act as barriers between the viewer and the painted subject, representing the experience of ‘not seeing’ or anti-vision; a method of painting that is simultaneously for and against the image, both supporting and undermining it.” Consequently, when creating his own paintings, Graeme considers how visual experience is processed and structured. Through the texturing of paint, the play between light and shadow, the use of colour to elucidate and obfuscate, and the creation of passages that lead from depictive definition to near-formlessness, Graeme’s paintings explore the tenuous relationship between semblance and abstraction; between information and interpretation. Graeme received his BFA from the University of Windsor in 2011, where he was nominated for the BMO Student Art Competition and received the Dennis W. Knight Award for Excellence in Visual Arts. He went on to receive his MFA from the Painting Department at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, in 2013. He has exhibited in several curated exhibitions in Michigan and Ontario, including two, year-long exhibitions entitled “Experiencing Perspectives” at the Mercedes Benz Financial Headquarters in Farmington Hills, “Night Show” at the Detroit Artists Market, The Art Gallery Windsor’s Triennial Exhibition “Possible Futures: What is to be Done?” and more recently exhibiting in “The Story of Things” and “Who’s Romeo” at SB Contemporary gallery in Windsor, Ontario. His work is represented in numerous private and corporate collections, including H W Kaufman Financial Group, and Burns and Wilcox Canada. Graeme lives and works in Windsor, Ontario.