KWT Contemporary is pleased to present new paintings by Alex D'Arcy, new sculptures by Lauren Nurse, and "Geography of Anonymity": a group show featuring Anuta Skrypnychenko, Sebastian Butt, and CN Tower Liquidation.  

November 24, 2011 - January 7 , 2012* 

*December 23 - January 7 by appointment only

opening reception with artists present:
Thursday, November 24, 2011
from 6 - 8 p.m. 

Lower Gallery and Mezzanine Gallery:

Alex D'Arcy: "Nocturnes"

KWT contemporary is pleased to welcome Alex D'Arcy back to Toronto, and to her first solo exhibition with the gallery, following completion of her graduate studies at Central St. Martin's School for Art in London, UK. This new suite of paintings represents a visual synthesis of her experiences in the built urban environments of the old and new worlds of London and Toronto. While developing this body of work, D'Arcy immersed herself in Chopin's piano sonatas, which informed the rhythm, movement and colour sequences of the paintings themselves. The result is an exhibition of oils on canvas which is, in totality, cooly elegant, restrained, and yet vibrantly alive.

Regarding her latest work, D'Arcy states: "Chopin's Nocturnes are melancholic, elegiac demonstrations between form and mood. Counterpoint to create tension, a technique for Chopin, evokes my own tandem interests as a painter. As with the music, weaving through the compositional structure of the paintings are broken chords that animate the space around them. Many of the works in this exhibition begin from the formal structure of optical relations, or how subtle variations in color will strive to become as different from each other as possible when put side by side. The seemingly neutral ground in the work becomes the support, an animated space, an active context that holds and dissembles, conceals and reveals. These relationships, among the individual colours and in relation to the space that holds them, can foster mood or provoke emotional experience."

Alex D'Arcy is represented by KWT Contemporary.

Lauren Nurse: "New Sculpture"

Lauren Nurse's current work synthesizes her previous interest in the modern separation and opposition between culture and nature, and current interest in locating the mythological/uncanny in evocations of the 'wild'. She is interested in the dissolution of boundaries between categories, ideas, and objects, the tension between inside and outside, and the intersections that occur when borders of the body become fluid and porous.

Lauren Nurse is a transplanted Québecer, living and working in Toronto, Ontario. She completed her MFA in print media and installation at York University in 2008, and has exhibited in Toronto, Montreal, New Mexico and Italy. She has in participated residency programs at Montréal's Atelier de L'ile, Atelier Circulaire, the Vermont Studio Center, Newfoundland's Pouch Cove Foundation and Muskoka's Tree Museum Sculpture Garden. She currently teaches print media and design at University of Toronto in Mississauga, OCAD and York University.

Lauren Nurse is represented by KWT Contemporary.

Upper Gallery:

Featuring emerging Toronto artists Anuta Skrypnychenko (photography), Sebastian Butt (video), and CN Tower Liquidation* (sculpture: Sebastian Butt, Xan Hawes and Charlie Murray)

"A geography of anonymity exists in cities where we constantly move around and sit beside people we don't know: people we call strangers. It exists in the photographs found at thrift stores, extracted from the homes of the deceased, and photographs taken of a lonely man on a street corner. We navigate this geography with mixed emotions, sometimes with detachment, while searching for meaning below the surface of our every day lives. The artists in this exhibition are explorers of this geography, which is not uncharted, per-se, but often avoided or ignored. Each work is like a detour; slightly disorienting, surprising, and like all side roads, full of new contour and rich detail.

Using the anonymous person as vehicle, these photo, video, and sculptural works reflect on various themes including voyeurism, nostalgia, the archive, ritualization, and fetish. In each work, a person or people are shown, but always with obscured faces, and their locations are archetypes of locations, such as an apartment, an empty room, a diner with bare white walls. These people could be anyone, anywhere, which begs the question: Where do we imagine they are, and why? Where do they fit into our imaginations? Do we take account of them? How little or how much?"

-Anna Kovler, Intern and Guest Curator

* click here for the CN Tower Liquidation Instructional Tour

Media inquiries:
Aurelie K. Collings, Ph.D.
Director and Curator

KWT contemporary
624 Richmond Street West
Toronto, ON M5V 1Y9
tel. 416-646-2706
gallery hours: wed-sat 12-6

info@kwtcontemporary.com
www.kwtcontemporary.com
www.kwtcontemporary.blogspot.com