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Embody: an exhibition of works by 5 Toronto artists featuring the human face and figure is the second summer exhibition for Studio Nine Gallery at Headbones Gallery

To embody: to become, to behold, to be seen. Our corporeality defines our physical existence in this world and five contemporary artists visualize this concept. How do we see ourselves and how does this reflect in what we create? The works in this exhibition are figurative in nature, but are far removed from any traditionalist style.

Paula Vandermey finds the creative complexity that exists in the relationship between the human form and the natural world to be a constant source of wonder and inspiration. The body is both an intricate form and an alluring enigma.
She works with hot cast glass and a variety of other materials. By using variations in texture, she is able to convey the contrasts between strength and fragility, form and frame.

Brian Donnelly tries to maintain a sense of honesty as well as a sense of humor within his work. These aspects joint with an interest in the analysis of art and art culture have been the primary ingredients through the majority of his work. These elements allow Brian to invite my viewer to look outside the two-dimensional plane, and consider the context of the work, as well as the process involved in the completion of work. In doing so he blurs the line between painting the verb and painting the noun.

The best way to describe Boo’s work would be "maximal painting". She is a girl who fantasizes about secret "boys only" zones, like gay dungeons and bath houses. Some of her painting obsessions also stem from a love of old time Victorian garb, street art and graffiti stuffs, decaying architecture, Austrian expressionist art, Euro trash travels, Roman fountains, techno and rock music. Basically, Boo paints and lives by the idea of "horror vacui". She feels life is already sterile enough; therefore art should be hyper- exciting and the opposite of minimal. Boo tries to use every color imaginable.

Boo aims to combat minimal boredom with maximum "horndom".

Irina Dascalu paintings are about connections, echoes and transformations: old to new,
image to image, image to symbol. She uses people she is well acquainted with, whose lives that have made a remark on her or of people whom she knows nothing about.
Irina feels that, although the portrait as a genre is anchored in the past, it echoes in the
present differently and ever so human. Faces of people known or not known to us, barge into our subconscious and desire to speak.

Tara Gilchrist has spent the past several years developing a body of work that incorporates her photography, as well as her design skills. Using the new technique of photosensitive glass, used only by a handful of people in the world and other techniques such as murrine, graals, enamels and silk-screens, she attempts to bring a unique twist to simple forms.

Studio Nine Gallery is based out of Headbones Gallery for the summer.

Getting there:

For more information contact: Ninette Gyorody
Phone: 416-580-1171
Email: ninette@studioninegallery.com

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