Press - Deon Venter
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OLYMPIA - Gallery Orange, Montreal, 2010
MISSING - John K. Grande, 2008 MISSING & FLIGHT 182 - Solo Exhibition, Buschlen Mowatt Gallery and Toronto International Art Fair, 2008 MISSING & FLIGHT 182 - Vie des Arte, 2008-09 THE ORDER OF THINGS - Mira Goddard, Toronto, 2006 LAST SUPPER - Parisien Laundry, Montreal, 2005 HEADLINES - Parisien Laundry, Montreal, 2005, Dr. Eva Seidner HEADLINES - Parisien Laundry, Montreal, 2005, John K. Grande HEADLINES - Buschlen Mowatt Gallery, Vancouver, 2004, Gary Michael Dault HEADLINES - Buschlen Mowatt Gallery, Vancouver, 2004, Yvonne Zacharias FOUNDERS - Ballard Lederer Gallery, Vancouver, 2003 RIDERS - Vortex Gallery, Salt Spring Island, 2002 |
MISSING AND FLIGHT 182
Solo Exhibition - Buschlen Mowatt Gallery & Toronto International Art Fair 2008 MISSING A series of paintings on the missing women from Vancouver’s East side. FLIGHT – 182 A series of paintings on the Air India disaster. “These paintings are soulful in their expressive and very painterly transfer and reframing of a tragedy from one idiom into another. What we cannot see becomes as relevant as what we can see. Though we build the scene in our mind’s eye from the visual evidence being presented, it is the duality of visible and invisible elements that builds a tension. The double entendre of structure/obstruction, and subject/reduction causes us to ask questions. We question the nature of the painterly process and what realism and representation really mean in a broader interpretive context. What is being represented becomes a device to express less tangible truths, and on a more universal level – the very nature of truth. The act of erasure, the defacement of direct experience – the distortion – involves recognition of the dualities of attractions and repulsion. Venter presents the implicit violence through painterly effects analogous to that unlikely spiritual icon in the history of art, Rembrandt’s Carcass of Beef: Flayed Ox (1655). While the subject matter is controversial, the intention and resolution these works achieve brings recognition and respect for the lives of the women from Vancouver Eastside and the victims who perished in the Air India disaster.” John K. Grande, 2008 – Art Forum “As a painter my goal in documenting these tragedies, is not only to memorialize, but to attain beautiful paintings that will, in their very execution, bring some resolution, both emotionally and intellectually” Deon Venter, 2008 |