This passage, written by Deborah Proskow, is directly excerpted from the 2003 exhibition brochure.
At first glance, what do the works of Toronto artist Christine Shaw and Victoria artist Brian White have to do with the notion of ‘landscape’? Further, what possibly could the works of these two artists have in common? Given that both sublime to expand architectural parameters, could an argument be made for the fabrication of ‘interior landscapes’ that elicit physical and visual responses parallel to those experiences in the great outdoors? After all, given the formidable Canadian climate, a significant amount of time in this country is spent in the ‘great outdoors’.
Anyone habituated to the sublime Canadian winter has no doubt suffered the sensory deprivation and social internment that can last months. What better incentive than to construct alternative spaces for social discourse or visual vistas of colour? Shaw and White push to dissolve interior limits: Shaw suspends oases of playful materials between the ceiling and floor, distancing those boundaries; White dissolves walls into honeycomb pockets of diverse hues. Shaw’s play stations invite hands-on discovery as surely as White’s hexagons defy any patterned schematic. Surprises abound and sensory spaces open up at every turn.
Shaw insinuates her practice into the “architectural properties and behavioural characteristics” of the gallery. Eschewing acquiescence to ceiling and floor, Shaw investigates “ways to manipulate horizontal plane between ground and ceiling, a space very rarely considered in our daily movements.” Penetration and expansion of ‘sky and ground’ position viewers in a planar landscape of dangling populated interstices eliciting interactivity and shared responses. Fabrication in rubber and inflatable latex defies anyone’s resistance to play.
Cooly and conservatively, White’s work embraces references to domestic interior decor. However, by pushing pattern and decoration into randomness and indecipherability, White’s work opens up frontiers of serendipitous colour play - a meadow of delights, so to speak - not found in your average wallpaper. rrepetitiveyet not, the visual experience is confounding and theoretically endless. The closer inspection gives way to multitudinous variations revealing a Janus-like two-faced nature: what is upon the wall extends far beyond it, though the wall remains. While comfortable and familiar, White’s walls do not placate but rather entice further visual speculation. These days, much ado is made about the technology of virtual space - electronic, limitless, infinite, yet phantom and immaterial. Both Shaw and White challenge the reign of the techno-virtual by retaining practices that grapple with real space and by manipulating materials to stretch and extend structural and physical limits. By perceptually permeating boundaries imposed by architecture, enclosed interior spaces metamorphose into tracts of the landscape.
Christine Shaw (b. 1965 in Ontario, Canada) started as a self-taught watercolorist in 2020.
Wanting to further her knowledge of watercolour painting, she enrolled in the Tracy Lizotte Art Academy. She continues her studies today.
To see more of Christine’s work, check out her website here: https://www.christineshawfineart.com/
From Artmur:
[Éric Lamontagne was] Born in Saint-Hyacinthe (QC) in 1966.
A multidisciplinary artist, Éric Lamontagne is interested in perception and the invisible through the development of works that blur the boundaries between reality and fiction. In his works, he draws inspiration from art, science and different ways of representing reality. He explores the visual universe in a multitude of styles and techniques that coexist without hierarchy. Since 1993, he has held several group and individual exhibitions in Quebec and abroad. In 2004, he was awarded the Bourse Plein sud. His exhibition Du haut de mon sous-sol presented at the Salle Alfred-Pellan of the Maison des arts de Laval earned him the “Exhibition of the Year Award – Exhibition Centre” at the 2012 AGAC Visual Arts Gala. This same exhibition was listed in one of the “Top 3” best exhibitions of 2012 according to Canadian Art. His works are part of numerous public and private collections, including those of the Art Loan Collection of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, that of the Musée du Bas-St-Laurent, that of the Cirque du Soleil and that of Loto-Québec.
To explore more of Eric’s practice, take a look at his website here: https://www.ericlamontagne.com/