Prints | Oct 29, 2007

Artist: Michael Murphy
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Artist: Michael Murphy
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Artist: Adam Bridgland
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Artist: Tim Mara
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Artist: Red Grooms
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Artist: Dallas Shaw
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If you had to pick just one theme explored by Toronto-based artist Daryl Vocat, it would have to be the Boy Scout. Vocat incorporates vintage illustrations of scouts from old manuals into his extremely contemporary screen prints, empowering the boys in uniform to behave badly, or perhaps more true to themselves. Vocat’s recent installation, The Secret of the Midnight Shadow, is a life-sized pop-up book that takes over the gallery to reveal notions that lurk in the night. The dark of the woods gives rise to the abandonment of convention, making way for the invitation into the imagination.
Artist: Daryl Vocat
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Shoes, handbag, suitcase - what more does anyone need to embark on a life of jet-setting? Unfortunately, Steve Miller’s X-Ray Fashion pigment prints reveal that the bags are empty and someone is going to need a crash course on proper packing. Although Miller uses hospital-issue x-ray machines, airport security is less likely to allow those thorns as carry-on. In any case, long-stemmed roses do not travel well.
Artist: Steve Miller
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Printmaker and illustrator Ryan Price specializes in drypoint printmaking. These days a grouping of serious childlike humans who are often about to indulge in the consumption of body parts replaces prints of a circus theme. The pictures are decidedly odd, yet incredibly intriguing. Price’s characters are well-dressed and well-mannered, looking for all the world as though they are waiting for everyone to be served before tucking in. These parlour pictures are somehow so polite that they appear to be modest about their macabre nature.
Artist: Ryan Price
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Prints of dark-haired beauties figure prominently in the oeuvre of pop artist Alex Katz. Either moody and fashionable, and on their way out, or simply enjoying themselves on a day at the beach, Katz’s heroines of the day-to-day are the most striking subjects of his many years of paintings, silkscreens, etchings and woodblocks. Style has always been a crucial element of Katz’s work and indeed his subjects project an innate sense of knowing just what to wear and how to appear comfortable and natural while doing so.
Artist: Alex Katz
+ alexkatz.com

Susannah Bielak is a printmaker in Minnesota whose Aerial Gaze series takes the viewer to look down on the subjects of the prints from above. This perspective allows the viewer to watch the subjects without their knowledge, while at the same time, allowing them to form and re-form as patterns rather than individuals. The bird’s eye view of an urban area is especially interesting as a sort of city choreography reveals itself on sidewalks and at bus stops. The movement of the life forms creates overlaps, the more shadowy figures in Bielak’s work. Maybe some of those street level coffeeshops should move upstairs …
Artist: Susannah Bielak
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Wilson Shieh is a Hong Kong painter who specializes in Chinese brush painting, or gongbi. Although Shieh is using a technique that peaked in the year 800, he combines a sense of humour and a touch of surrealism within the traditional art form, intent on using the past to present contemporary themes. Shown here are three of Shieh’s most recent etchings, some of which touch on the topic of fecundity or the life cycle, an idea recurrent in his work.
Artist: Wilson Shieh
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