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EXHIBITION DETAILS:
SHAWN SKEIR
A SOLO EXHIBITION OF NEW PAINTINGS RUNS FROM MAY 16TH - JUNE 1O TH
OPENING RECEPTION , WEDNESDAY MAY 16 , 2012 , 6 - 10 PM
Shawn Skeir: LIFE LINES Paintings and Drawings
curated by Pamela Edmonds
This recent series of contemporary abstract paintings is rooted in a
dynamic urban expressionist style that echoes fluid movements of light
and colour while capturing the immediate and vital energies of
contemporary life.
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This exhibition brings together a selection of recent work by
Toronto-based contemporary abstract artist Shawn Skeir. Describing
himself as a "sculptor in two-dimensions", Skeir's artistic practice
is rooted in a dynamic urban expressionist style
that echoes fluid movements of light and colour while capturing the
immediate and vital energies of contemporary life. Layers of vividly
coloured acrylics densely applied create form and texture in
viscerally charged compositions that reference the performative act of
painting itself. Tracing a kind of choreography, (referencing the
strong gestural work of artists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de
Kooning), his purposefully directed brushwork and design-focused
artistic techniques create an unusual visual resonance in imagery that
appears to pulsate, move and shimmer, engaging viewers with their
lively physicality. He often employs the formal modernist trope of the
stripe, however unlike traditional hard-edged abstracts, Skeir's work
is highly sensual, evoking a kind of abstracted corporeality, tracing
paths of the artist’s own body moving in the act of filling the work's
varied surfaces with an immediacy that disrupts the painting’s
potentially uniform geometry.
Seemingly spontaneous, the fluidity of bold lines also conveys an
intense degree of concentration and the artist's striking command of
the optical effects of colour theory, exposing how both positive and
negative space echo back and forth through his deft use of colour
juxtaposition. Striving to create images that represent a unification
of essential organic forms, contemporary urban landscapes and
post-digital concepts, Skeir's work achieves a fusion of the cerebral
and emotional through shapes, colours, lines and calligraphic markings
that echo the reality found both within organic and urban forms. Here
structure rather than appearance creates a new type of landscape, one
that is composed, not of trees and land, but of the tension between
space, form, colour and planes. Influenced by ongoing change of pace
and people of the contemporary city, the artist explains, "I want to
express a feeling of unity with movement as a reminder that we should
celebrate our diversity and draw from each others cultural and
traditional experiences."
Born in Nova Scotia and currently based in Toronto, Shawn Skier
studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and George Brown
College. His work has been exhibited throughout Toronto and the US
and is in numerous private and public collections. The artist works
out of the self-named studio and gallery space in Toronto's Parkdale
neighborhood. Visit www.shawnskeir.com
The BAND Gallery is located at 823A Bloor St. West just west of
Christie station on the south side
Hours of Operation:
Wednesday - Friday 12pm - 7pm
Saturday 12 - 6
Sunday 1 - 5
Skeir Gallery
1537a Queen Street West Toronto
416 854 2862
www.facebook.com/shawnskeir
www.shawnskeir.com
SKEIR GALLERY HOURS
Thurs - Sunday 12 - 6pm
or by appointment 416. 854 2862
shawnskeir@gmail.com
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