This is the first in a series of four themed micro exhibitions commissioned from the New York-based Canadian artist Micah Lexier. The For Example exhibitions each incorporate works by three artists, housed in identical, separate vitrines.
The current exhibition draws attention to all-overness of composition, and the density achieved by layering and distribution of motifs over a given pictorial field. Each work by Kim Moodie (a teeming, edge-to-edge drawing), Jeannie Thib (stacked wood) and Joy Walker (silkscreened cloth) is housed in its own vitrine and must be viewed from above, instead of in the traditional, wall-mounted fashion.
For more than two decades, London, Ontario artist Kim Moodie has woven a personal vocabulary of imagery into complexly layered line drawings. His work finds a natural affinity with that of a new generation of artists who have returned to drawing as a primary practice. Inspired by classical painting, Moodie’s unique imagery suggests Mexican “Day of the Dead” depictions, medieval manuscript illuminations, and underground comix.
Ornament and pattern are the focus of Toronto artist Jeanne Thib’s installations, sculptures, print works and drawings. Historical designs, altered through magnification and repetition, are remade in altered forms using industrial materials. Motifs accumulated through cutting and stacking create nets and spills, stepped landscapes and architectural models. These works invert the expected relationships between ornament and architecture, culture and nature, original and copy.
Joy Walker is a Toronto textile artist who owns and operates WORK Textiles (since 1995), producing custom silkscreen printed fabrics. Her fabrics have been sold in retail stores throughout Canada and the U.S. Walker teaches in the Textile Department of Sheridan College, Ontario. Micah Lexier notes that in Punctuation/Red Repeat: “Joy alternates the red and black motifs, in some cases rotating them, to generate a dense field that is both uniform and individuated…The work is deceptively simple, yet maintains a dynamic tension between the distinctiveness of its individual elements and the consistency of its overall composition.”
Meet the curator at the opening reception on Saturday, June 23rd from 2:oopm to 5:00pm.
