Newzones is thrilled to announce River’s Way, a solo exhibition of new work by Canadian contemporary artist, Yechel Gagnon and Painted by Candle and Neon Light, a solo exhibition of new work by Canadian artist, Casey McGlynn.

For the past 30 years, Canadian artist Yechel Gagnon has created a distinctive visual language using plywood as an artistic material to create bas-reliefs. River’s way speaks to the power and the enduring beauty of the natural world. The carved imagery transitions between abstraction and depiction, forming an elegant allegory in response to the artist’s natural surroundings viewed, lived and transposed through her creative process. Evoking a connection between time and place, these fictional landscapes embrace multiple perspectives interweaving elements of nature to produce various transitions and viewpoints. The rhythms and implicit passages of time calls to mind either the cycles of seasons or of days.

As a self-taught artist, Casey McGlynn’s artworks take on a surrealist pop art style. As a child in rural Ontario, McGlynn sat in front of the television and tirelessly drew on old grocery bags and scrap paper. Inspired by reoccurring symbols from his upbringing – animals, birds from his studio window, and numbers from the memorized math times tables – a stylistic shift to autobiographical mixed media became the signature mark of McGlynn’s practice. These symbols are often multi-representational. The large man may be McGlynn, the bird is a woman friend, and horses are symbolic of his past life and memories. Through the layering of personal and historical narratives, his artwork is as much about revealing the truth and expressing emotions as it is about documenting actual fact.