Adam Gunn

Deep Down

2016

I am primarily a painter of things and my practice has grown out of a process of subverting the genre of still life. For my most recent paintings I have been working in an improvisat...

Jessica Houston’s most recent works look north. What is north? Where is it? Is it a fixed place, or something else? Her second solo show at Art Mûr brings together paintings, a sound sculpture, and chine collé prints, all of which reveal a fragile, fluid, and often fractured, north. An iron ore stone becomes a speaker, playing recordings of interviews and singing, and expanding the physical presence of the stone. The exaggerated textures of the paintings give them, too, a sculptural and documentary feel. They record how actions—breaking and piercing, pushing and pulling—disrupt and transform the paintings’ surfaces. By resembling patterns one finds in the wild—scratches across the surface of a rock, uneven waves that form on melting snow—they unhinge any clear distinction between what is natural and what is made. Made with a printmaking technique that binds together distinct papers, the chine collé prints begin with photographs Houston took of Baffin Island. She then combines the images with coloured paper, creating traces of the process of extracting and replacing parts of a scene, and an equal awareness of both what is present and absent. Some are composed of double circles, like looking through binoculars. In Business As Usual, a decaying interior—peeling wallpaper...

Jessica Houston’s most recent works look north. What is north? Where is it? Is it a fixed place, or something else? Her second solo show at Art Mûr brings together paintings, a sound sculpture, and chine collé prints, all of which reveal a fragile, fluid, and often fractured, north. An iron ore stone becomes a speaker, playing recordings of interviews and singing, and expanding the physical presence of the stone. The exaggerated textures of the paintings give them, too, a sculptural and documentary feel. They record how actions—breaking and piercing, pushing and pulling—disrupt and transform the paintings’ surfaces. By resembling patterns one finds in the wild—scratches across the surface of a rock, uneven waves that form on melting snow—they unhinge any clear distinction between what is natural and what is made. Made with a printmaking technique that binds together distinct papers, the chine collé prints begin with photographs Houston took of Baffin Island. She then combines the images with coloured paper, creating traces of the process of extracting and replacing parts of a scene, and an equal awareness of both what is present and absent. Some are composed of double circles, like looking through binoculars. In Business As Usual, a decaying interior—peeling wallpaper, a rusted stove—is juxtaposed with the soft glow of a yellow circle. This continues Houston’s ongoing use of colour to question the particulars of perception. Heritage of All, White with Greed and Iron, and The Spaces we Breath, Houston’s titles read like lines of a haiku. Composed as prose, they are also confrontational, mapping out the cultural and environmental impacts of the extraction of resources in the Arctic. We witness scenes of violent decay, and yet simply carry on, like Business As Usual. In What Nations Come and Go a pale purple oval nearly fills the frame, revealing only in the very far right a simple cabin in front of a rocky incline. A similar imposing cloud of colour, this time blue, dominates the landscape in Mapped, Claimed, and Evaluated. The north is just as much an idea as it is a place, and is one that looms large in the Canadian imagination. There are few better examples than Glenn Gould...

Jessica Houston’s most recent works look north. What is north? Where is it? Is it a fixed place, or something else? Her second solo show at Art Mûr brings together paintings, a sound sculpture, and chine collé prints, all of which reveal a fragile, fluid, and often fractured, north. An iron ore stone becomes a speaker, playing recordings of interviews and singing, and expanding the physical presence of the stone. The exaggerated textures of the paintings give them, too, a sculptural and documentary feel. They record how actions—breaking and piercing, pushing and pulling—disrupt and transform the paintings’ surfaces. By resembling patterns one finds in the wild—scratches across the surface of a rock, uneven waves that form on melting snow—they unhinge any clear distinction between what is natural and what is made. Made with a printmaking technique that binds together distinct papers, the chine collé prints begin with photographs Houston took of Baffin Island. She then combines the images with coloured paper, creating traces of the process of extracting and replacing parts of a scene, and an equal awareness of both what is present and absent. Some are composed of double circles, like looking through binoculars. In Business As Usual, a decaying interior—peeling wallpaper...

Oil paint, collage and mixed media on panel Unique work Hand-signed lower right by the artist

Triptych composed of three wood panels with oil paint, collage, textile and pictures Unique work

"History Sticks to Your Feet" (2025) is an original, handmade oil painting on canvas, by Amy Hutcheson, that depicts an abstract painting with colorful geometric shapes in a pale blu...

Since Franz Ecker’s early death in 1999 his work has been newly appreciated, what is manifested in numerous exhibitions, catalogues and in the acclaimed film about the artist. He was extremely productive and left behind an almost unmanageable scope of works in various styles. Among them some of the top works that are unparalleled in recent Austrian art history and whose significance has not yet been adequately appreciated. After finishing his studies in 1966 in class of prof. Sergius Pauser and after receiving his two prizes, Franz Ecker moved back to Leonding where he developed his clear, abstract language of forms. Among his sources of inspiration are Cezanne and Picasso, as well as Martin Polasek who was one of his teachers. This led him to painting in a flat and abstract manner, which triggers a spatial experience through its exact color coordination and strict composition. The strongest period in his oeuvre is the time when his paintings are between figuration and abstraction. Only until around 1975 he additionally creates numerous watercolors, even though he restricts this medium to his more lyrical works. If Franz Ecker cannot be included in the avant-garde cannon of the 70’s, it is only because he witheld from presenting his works on the art market. Instead of using the opportunities that were offered to him in Vienna, he returned after his time at the academy to Linz where there was no appreciation nor market for his works. Distanced from the established art business, Ecker lives uncompromisingly the precarious life of a lonely genius. An artist myth, which in his case certainly is a bitter reality. Unimpressed by this, Ecker develops an increasingly broad language of forms within the clear line of abstract pictorial conception, which he emphasizes with constantly new forms of signature. At the end of the seventies his works became more gestural and expressive. His works like “Kafka” anticipate the “Neue Wilden”. When these are celebrated as the “return of painting...