BRIAN BOULTON

Vancouver artist BRIAN BOULTON captures singular moments of everyday life in his detailed depictions of anonymous subjects in public spaces. Based on digital photos, these solitary figures face away from the viewer and are removed from their urban environment. Torn and rumpled jeans, worn down shoes and the subtle difference in texture of fabrics work together to construct a portrait of these anonymous individuals. These details have been rendered delicately in graphite by the artist, who admits to a long-held fixation with people watching. Boulton sees his drawings as a neutral documentation of a subject which becomes a collaboration with the viewer as they participate by projecting both personality and history on the subjects.

Boulton has employed photography as a base for his drawings since his early teens. While many contemporary artists generate digital images as a final product, Boulton reverses this process by producing a physical analog image from the digital file. This process of manual reproduction assigns new significance to minute details; while the consequence of a knitted texture may be lost in a photograph, it gains new importance when rendered exactly by hand. Boulton’s painstakingly detailed and complex practice is further nuanced by the incorporation of an element of spontaneity. Unaware they are being photographed, the subjects assume uninhibited, natural and occasionally classic poses that lend the images a timeless quality which would otherwise be obfuscated by their contemporary clothing. Within these drawings, Boulton successfully communicates the sense of movement or stillness transmitted by the human body as it passes through three-dimensional space.

BRIAN BOULTON studied architectural rendering at the College of New Caledonia in Prince George, BC, as well as Film and Art History at Langara College in Vancouver. He has been employed in the arts for over 30 years and has been involved in many artist-run centres and galleries. (winsor gallery)

+++

☁ BRIAN BOULTON
☁ BRIAN BOULTON @ WINSOR GALLERY

SARAH MOON

SARAH MOON was born in France on November 17, 1941. She lives and works in Paris and is married to editor Robert Delpire. Sarah Moon is an autodidact. She acquired her photographic mastery when she worked as a model after finishing art school. In 1968, she changed from working in front of the camera to working behind it, for good, and instantly succeeded with her unique style: In the same year, she participated in a group show on vanguard fashion photography in Delpire gallery in Paris.

+++

☁ SARAH MOON @ GALERIE ZUR STOCKEREGG
☁ SARAH MOON@ CAMERA OBSCURA
☁ SARAH MOON @ HOWARD GREENBERG GALLERY

KATHARINA FRITSCH

KATHARINA FRITSCH’s iconic and singular sculpture plays on the tension between reality and apparition, between the familiar and the surreal or uncanny. Her iconic objects, images, installations and sound works seem able to imprint themselves on the mind, as if they were gestalts or things we have seen and experienced before. Hearts, crosses, skulls, bottles and Madonnas are used to play on the fantasies and images that we share, but they are transformed through colour and material into things open and mysterious: latent notions transfigured into primal forms.

Fritsch often recasts characters and elements from her own, private world. In works such as Tischgesellschaft (Company at Table), (1988), subjects – usually male – are transformed through colour and material into frozen, hyperreal beings that seem without otherworldly apparitions. The clarity, austerity and precision of Fritsch’s forms is developed through a lengthy manual sculpting process, a way to achieve the near industrial perfection of their finish.

Fritsch also reworks memories or fantasies into strange, unsettling visions that confront the viewer with their bold directness, formal accuracy and startling geometry. In her most recent installation, based on postcards sent to the artist as a child from her grandfather, Fritsch has created a dreamlike garden, that is formally precise and which resonates with both personal and cultural nostalgia.

Singular forms are often used repeatedly to create a psychotic proliferation, placed in a strictly gridded tableaux or in perfect concentric circles for example Rattenkönig (Rat-King), (1991-1993) or Kind mit Pudeln (Child with Poodles), (1995-1996). Fritsch’s work often has unsettling religious or quasi-spiritual associations and is deeply psychological, as if she is attempting to give an image to our deepest fears recovered from the world of myth, religion, cultural history and everyday life.

KATHARINA FRITSCH was born in 1956 in Essen, Germany and lives and works in Düsseldorf. She represented Germany in the 46th Venice Biennale and has had many solo exhibitions including Dia Center for the Arts, New York (1993), SF MOMA (1996), Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel (1997), Tate Modern, London (2001), K21, Düsseldorf (2002) and a survey exhibition at Kunsthaus Zurich (2009) that will tour to Deichtorhallen Hamburg.(white cube)


☁ KATHARINA FRITSCH @ WHITE CUBE

AMY ALICE THOMPSON

The quiet subtlety of AMY ALICE THOMPSON's work belies an inner phoenix, a hidden knowledge that glints at the heart of mythic symbols. Composed of photographs and images gleaned from vintage catalogues, encyclopedias and other ephemera, her collages simultaneously evoke a familiar world- a bucolic realm of birds, insects, moonlight and natural phenomena-and invest it with a perplexing symbolic potential. In the strange inter-zone of these images, the moon flips upside-down, birds have the bodies of girl-children, starlight comes down to earth, and the fragile innocence of childhood haunts the night sky. At once mutely attractive and profoundly disconcerting, these quiet, inexplicable images make us wonder.

AMY ALICE THOMPSON is an Ottawa-based mixed media artist. She studied Fine Art at York University and graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design (Toronto/Florence, Italy)with honours in 1995. Her work has been exhibited across Canada as well as in New York, Los Angeles, Paris and Berlin. She has exhibted with The Ottawa Art Gallery (Ottawa), Art Interiors (Toronto) and Diane Farris Gallery (Vancouver). She has received support from the City of Ottawa, Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council. (dale smith gallery)

+++

☁ AMY ALICE THOMPSON
☁ AMY ALICE THOMPSON @ DALE SMITH GALLERY
☁ AMY ALICE THOMPSON @ RATSDEVILLE

JOE HOLBROOK

☁ JOE HOLBROOK
☁ JOE HOLBROOK @ WOOSTER