Herringer Kiss Gallery presents Dennis Ekstedt: Observer.

This exhibition will run from April 13th to May 11th.

Opening Reception will be Saturday, April 13th, from 2-5PM, and the artist will be in attendance

MICHELLE AUSTEN : BECOMING

April 12-18, 2024

 Please join Masters Gallery for an opening reception: Saturday, April 13, 2024, 1-4pm with the Artist in attendance.

 Monarch butterflies are beautiful and soft, yet busy and purposeful.
They are intuitive beyond measure, seeking to fly and reproduce, take risks and persevere.

To me, they show extreme resilience and an inspiring sense of freedom.
Monarchs require community to survive, they huddle together in fir trees high in the Mexican forest.

When the sun comes out, they spread their wings and fly towards the light.
This magical experience I will always remember.
Let us become all that we want to be ... 

- Michelle Austen

Image :
Michelle Austen
Free to Fly, 2024
Oil on canvas
36x60 in.

April 20 – May 15, 2024

An exhibition devoted to the paintings and drawings of one of Canada’s most influential modernists, Bertram Brooker (1888-1955).  Opens Saturday April 20, 2024 at 2pm when curator Michael Parke-Taylor will sign copies of his monograph Bertram Brooker:  When We Awake, a retrospective exhibition on now at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection through June 2, 2024.

Herringer Kiss Gallery presents Nate McLeod: Slow Burn.

This exhibition will run from March 7th to April 6th.

Brian Harvey’s newest series of work, When the Time Comes, is particularly interested in immortalizing the ephemeral and exploring the ordinary iconography of urban landscapes. Uninterested in the grand spectacle of downtown and the repeated popular motifs of Toronto, Harvey turns a lens onto the smaller, perhaps unremarkable yet recognizable spaces of Toronto -- not limited to, but primarily Toronto’s east end streets, corners, and locales. His artwork produces a familiar affect, the paintings leave viewers, with a sense of I’ve-been-there­ and I-swear-this-is-just-by-my-house.

Of particular interest to Harvey are the images of places he holds dear, both as an artist and preserver of relics and time capsules in the hyper-evolving landscape of Toronto. We see Harvey's classics: the laneways, street corners, and a return to his interiors. Harvey in some cases eulogizes the dog-eared diners and industrial buildings that have long closed: his subjects are often places that have gone by the way of time, as captured in One Last Time and Convergence. Perhaps more than previous exhibitions, human figures also feature prominently in the pieces.

Harvey is also well known for his distinct mark-making, creating a sense of realism with only the brushstrokes that are necessary – ultra-high realism gives way to feelings of nostalgia and memory.

Exhibition goes until May 4, 20234.

Every winter for the past 6 years we have curated an exhibition that celebrates colour. This year, I explored the concept of contrasts – variations and differences in both tone, shape and of course colour. The duality is sometimes apparent in a single work (like with Will Gorlitz’s glowing blood moon set against the rich and velvety dark blackness of space), while in other instances the juxtaposition requires multiple works (exemplified by Hans Wendt’s incredible soft and bold “index” watercolours).

Typically, the exhibition features abstract painting, however, this year, whimsy and figuration takes prominence. The artists featured include: Greg Curnoe, Mark Dicey, Jonathan Forrest, Will Gorlitz, Clark McDougall, Ron Moppett, William Perehudoff and Hans Wendt.

COUNTERPOINT – An Exhibition of new work by Nancy Callan and Mel Douglas.

Callan and Douglas with be presenting both individual and collaborative sculptures as part of the Exhibition.

Exhibition will run from March 23rd to May 7th

Join us for Vickie Vainionpää’s first major solo exhibition in Canada, “Gaze Paintings” opens Saturday March 16th from 2-5pm.

What does it mean to look at a painting? This is the central question explored in Vickie Vainionpää latest body of work, Gaze Paintings, in which she considers the historical implications of the gaze within painting. Vainionpää has developed a distinct visual language of forms that are abstract yet bodily, which are generated through custom built 3D modeling software before being painted in oil on canvas. For the works in Gaze Paintings, Vainionpää adds an additional step to her generative process, which begins with her own embodied gaze and herself as a subject apprehending canonical works of art.

While visiting museum collections during a residency in London, Vainionpää wore eye tracking glasses to record her eye movements while looking at paintings by Rubens, Tintoretto, and Bronzino, among others. Works that were chosen were ones which seemed to exist specifically for the male gaze or that featured a central female nude, with an interest in challenging the directionality of the gaze. Her gaze was mapped as data points in 3D space, which she then used to generate images of her signature tubular forms.

Within some of those forms are the suggestions of faces – points of fixation of the gaze, looking back at the viewer and alluding to though not fully revealing the relationship between the paintings and their source material. Her interest in cyborgism – the relationship of interdependence between humans and the augmenting technological devices that they use – reaches new ambition as she herself becomes a cyborg.

In her newest two paintings from the Gaze Paintings 2.0 series, Vainionpää extended the invitation to others to take part in her generative cyborgian experiment, and compiled the gazes from over 100 viewers on 2 paintings. Their collective gazes were analyzed as data points, and mapped into energetic and dynamic compositions that become an interconnected abstract tangle. Their titles, The Painter’s Studio and The Dream reference specific paintings that the viewers looked at, yet also suggest more ambiguous readings – perhaps it could have been a painter’s studio that viewers’ eyes darted around, rather than a painting of one.

Uniting physical and digital processes, the gaze paintings suggest an optimistic outlook on the creative possibilities of algorithms and technologies which tend to have more sinister associations of tracking and surveillance. Vainionpää works in a mode in which representation and abstraction are one and the same – the gaze paintings are the representation of a physical encounter with works of art, yet at the same time the abstraction of that encounter into a digital and subsequently painted image.

Written by Alex Feim

L.L. Contemporary is thrilled to announce Kui Cai’s upcoming solo exhibition, ‘Northern Dreamscape,’ featuring 18 of his latest oil paintings. Some of these pieces were created during a recent plein air painting event that the artist attended in Muskoka. It was a captivating gathering where artists painted, dined, and reveled so deeply that time seemed to stand still. This experience not only honored the joy of artistic creation but also cultivated a serene and cheerful atmosphere among the participants. Within this lively environment, artists were moved to explore and capture the surrounding beauty, continuously energized by the excitement of creation and the passion of the painting process. Cai regards these works with great esteem, valuing them as treasures and is eager to share them with the audience.

The Exhibition will run from February 12th to March 10th