Canada - Sculptures

Nicholas Crombach graduated from OCAD University’s Sculpture and Installation program in 2012. He has been awarded the Hayden Davies Memorial Award, Samuel Lazar Kagan Award, Abraham and Malka Green Award, and a BMO 1st Art Nomination. His work has been seen at Word On The Street, Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects, the Al Green...

Text by Marsha Taichman [...] There is art unless there is so much missing we cannot build a structure around it.. - Kate Hall, from Water Tower, 1998-2000 (after Rachel Whiteread) Montreal artist Guillaume Lachapelle presents a new collection of works at Art Mûr that is sure to surprise and delight gallery goers. These works are full of pristine lines and beautiful intrigue. He constructs and presents miniatures and life-size pieces that are subversive and unusual upon close examination. In these pieces, scale can be quite skewed. Even when objects are the size that we expect them to be, say, a 15-foot silver gazebo that one may enter and stand inside, they seem small. Lachapelle’s works can be mounted displays of tiny mechanical-seeming devices, apparatuses of unknown origins with no clear purpose, despite the fact that they offer a distinct air of functionality. In the works that Lachapelle has selected for this exhibition at Art Mûr, his subject matter has moved away from human and animal scenes and delved deeper into free-standing machinations. This means that we will see a greater starkness and a closer focus on the materiality in his constructions. The collection is full of the unexpected and the unusual. A library with a sunken-in, curved interior of wavy shelves...

Beyond Sociology: The Act of Seeing a Person Text by Edwin Janzen It is hardly surprising that in our society perceptions of homeless persons remain two-dimensional, stereotypical, inadequate. Even for the rare administration tackling the problems of homelessness in an effective, meaningful way, the homeless person’s humanity is buried beneath a mountain of endless statistical markers: mental illness, substance abuse, soup-kitchen attendance, etc. The enormous negativity lingering about the resultant profile permits scant room for other, arguably important accoutrements of the human experience—character, emotion, intellect, beauty, relationship to divinity—and leaves homeless persons basically where they already are: on the street, the objects of middle-class loathing or pity. Struck by this depressing determinism, artist Bevan Ramsay set out to cast portrait busts of homeless persons (one woman, the others men), producing an edition in fine, white statuary Hydrocal plaster mounted on mahogany bases. These portraits, titled Lesser Gods...

Guillaume Lachapelle's artistic practice is shaped predominantly by sculpture, expressed in the form of installations and detailed miniature models. Lachapelle presents playful universes which combine objects of undetermined purpose; in this way, he opens the conventions of our reality to fresh disposition. The architecture of his models - which Lachapelle has recently begun to make with the help of the latest 3-D printing technology - shows motifs originating from the everyday, certainly, but seeming strange, alienating or even uncanny when combined as the artist chooses. A kind of transition between two worlds often appears in Lachapelle's work - for example when the model of a library filled with books curves inwards and reveals a mysterious opening pointing into darkness - these are the artist's references to spaces and occurrences which may be concealed below the surface of outward semblance. Guillaume Lachapelle has participated in several solo and group exhibitions including Manèges at Circa - Centre d'Exposition Art Contemporain (Montreal) in 2006; Quebec Gold at the Ancien Collège des Jésuites (Rheims, France) in 2008 and in Abracadabra (Edward Day...

In 1914, a group of intrepid young men set forth into the northern wilderness with the ambition to document the uncharted territory of the Canadian collective unconscious. Their medium was that of sketchbooks and paint, and with these they rendered a vast and previously unknowable landscape into a tangible national identity. One could call their distinct style picturesque, as it cohered to many of the attributes prescribed by 18th century thinker William Gilpen – for capturing nature so as to make it both palatable and empowering for the viewer. During the romantic period in Europe, certain visual tropes emphasized the beauty of the natural landscape despite the rapid advancements of industrialism. As such, the picturesque, when applied properly, enabled the viewer to apprehend and revel in the vastness of change and opportunity with which they were presently confronted. It is at a similar juncture that we contemplate the works of contemporary sculptor and installation artist Shayne Dark, who’s large scale arborescent schemes present a striking encapsulation of both the magnitude as well as the limits of our natural resources. In an age where the re-assessment of our modes of production and consumption has become a main constituent of our identity, his work serves as a potent reminder of this position’s precarity. One piece resembling a cluster of branches, for example, balances in a tenuous fashion, relying on the equal distribution of weight among all its parts to stay upright. In another work, the boughs extend upwards from a base so small it threatens to tip over. As opposed to the romantic and idealized conceptions of a nature as realized in the compositions of the Group of Seven, Dark, by working in the industrial material of hot forged steel, acknowledges the imprint of the human hand on our surroundings. As art critic and theorist Rosalind Krauss...

This modern indoor sculpture by David Chamberlain was inspired by music and is made out of mahogany wood. The graceful curves of this contemporary solid mahogany sculpture by David Chamberlain appear in one illuminating perspective to emulate the image of a heart. Hand carved from one piece of this rare wood; the abstract form’s surface is such that the insides become the outsides creating a continuous, enigmatic, integrated form. The naturally rich grain is highly finished with a soft lustre that accentuates the form. Chamberlain’s sculptures...

As a child growing up in Nigeria, Samuel Nnorom’s artistic sensibilities emerged from observing the creative processes of his father, a shoemaker, and hi...

As a child growing up in Nigeria, Samuel Nnorom’s artistic sensibilities emerged from observing the creative processes of his father, a shoemaker, and hi...

As a child growing up in Nigeria, Samuel Nnorom’s artistic sensibilities emerged from observing the creative processes of his father, a shoemaker, and hi...

As a child growing up in Nigeria, Samuel Nnorom’s artistic sensibilities emerged from observing the creative processes of his father, a shoemaker, and hi...

As a child growing up in Nigeria, Samuel Nnorom’s artistic sensibilities emerged from observing the creative processes of his father, a shoemaker, and hi...

As a child growing up in Nigeria, Samuel Nnorom’s artistic sensibilities emerged from observing the creative processes of his father, a shoemaker, and hi...

As a child growing up in Nigeria, Samuel Nnorom’s artistic sensibilities emerged from observing the creative processes of his father, a shoemaker, and hi...

Toronto artist Sophie DeFrancesca has always been fascinated by vintage fashion. Pictures of her mother wearing gorgeous frocks from the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s served as a connection to...

Toronto artist Sophie DeFrancesca has always been fascinated by vintage fashion. Pictures of her mother wearing gorgeous frocks from the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s served as a connection to...

Toronto artist Sophie DeFrancesca has always been fascinated by vintage fashion. Pictures of her mother wearing gorgeous frocks from the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s served as a connection to...

Toronto artist Sophie DeFrancesca has always been fascinated by vintage fashion. Pictures of her mother wearing gorgeous frocks from the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s served as a connection to...

Toronto artist Sophie DeFrancesca has always been fascinated by vintage fashion. Pictures of her mother wearing gorgeous frocks from the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s served as a connection to...

I have been taking impressions of pills and creating a pill archive where pills are cast in silver and/or gold since 1995. At that time I was given pills as an answer to something th...

I have been taking impressions of pills and creating a pill archive where pills are cast in silver and/or gold since 1995. At that time I was given pills as an answer to something th...