Author: Zavitz Gallery

Categories
Exhibitions 2021 - 2022

“tmi” is a collaboration between Maeve Hind and Alexa Collette that came to life with the help of Justin Meyers, their CNC machine technician. Through experimenting with digital drawing and a CNC (computer numerical control) machine, they were able to create bodies reflective of the many states involved in being human. Bringing together paintings as well as sculpture and technology, the process has been integral in creating the works. 

The show was prompted from reflection on the experience of shifting states of being, bringing to light what might be invisible beneath the surface of the collective yet individual human experience. In this way, they challenge the expectations of what is socially acceptable to display and discuss in public. 

Derived from personal experiences with invisible illness and shifting levels of ability, the figures in the show exemplify the range of human emotion and feeling within experiences. “tmi” promotes the notion of vulnerability as a strength that everyone has the ability to explore. In accepting these changing states, they are able to connect with a wider audience and genuinely represent themselves as people moving through the world. 

The goal is to provide a sense of visibility that meets the viewer exactly where they are, no matter the state. 

So the question we leave you to ponder is, Do you think this is tmi?

@mjh_art_ @alexacollette @max.makers

Categories
Exhibitions 2020 - 2021

Lapse

By Hannah Pecyna

In this body of works, I explored my past experiences specifically focusing on moments of lost innocence. A loss of innocence is a common theme in literature in which a protagonist has an experience that leads to a greater awareness of the negative aspects of the world. This is usually shown through one experience. I believe that in the course of each person’s story, there is not just one but many losses of innocence which shape them. During quarantine, I have had a lot of time to reflect and understand which of my life experiences caused me to lose a shred of my innocence and how each experience impacted me greatly. Although it often has a negative connotation, I believe that a loss of innocence is not a negative experience. In the process of making these works, I explored this idea and learned that even in the worst of moments, the experience will help you to learn and grow as an individual. I learned a period of reflection and appreciation regarding the more negative experiences in your life can be essential to self actualization. We are consistently learning and growing as individuals. The lessons we learn are only worth something if we take the time to contemplate and recognize what we are being taught. The aim of these works is to challenge the viewer to reflect on their own experiences where they lost a shred of their innocence. From the acknowledgement of the momentary lapses where our innocence can be diminished, we can begin to heal from those experiences and use them to further understand ourselves, our emotions and how to carry on from our past. I titled this project Lapse because each work focuses on a specific momentary lapse in time in which I lost a fragment of my innocence, for better or for worse. I am interested in further exploring this idea by examining other peoples’ experiences of lost innocence and understanding how they have been shaped by their past.

Categories
Exhibitions 2020 - 2021

The Gifts of 2020

By Alexa Collette

  • AM pills
  • Breakfast
  • Breathing
  • Brush teeth
  • Call friends
  • Cook
  • Cuddle
  • Draw
  • Drink tea
  • Gratitude
  • Homework
  • Journal
  • Lunch
  • Mindfulness
  • Music
  • Outside
  • PM pills
  • Reflection
  • Scales
  • Shower
  • Sleep
  • Snack 1
  • Snack 2
  • Social
  • Walk
  • Watch show
Categories
Exhibitions 2020 - 2021

Process in Progress

Process in Progress is a documentation of the flow of consciousness from two young artists, Nevan Hinks and Colleen Alcorn.

We present you with two shelves and invite you to take a peek into the working of our minds, by flipping through the pages of our personal sketchbooks from over the past five years.

Alcorn, Book 1

Alcorn, Book 2

Alcorn, Book 3

Alcorn, Book 4

Hinks, Book 1

Hinks, Book 2

Hinks, Book 3

Hinks, Book 4

Colleen Alcorn is a queer, non-binary, Guelph based artist who creates work that focuses on the tension and space between lines. Working primarily with wood, metal and ink in various combinations, her multi- media sculptures aim to create a push and pull for the viewer’s eye. When working on a 2 dimensional scale, she aims to create balance through the use of repetition whilst exploring themes of identity, upbringing and the weight of existence.

Nevan Hinks is a Guelph based artist who uses her work to document and build the ever changing relationship with herself and her own identity. Although she works with multiple different mediums, she makes all of her art with the purpose of expressing a piece of herself. She aims to bring viewers on a story through her experiences, and to take what they feel they need from it.

Categories
Exhibitions 2020 - 2021

I am my father’s daughter

By Laura Vautour

This collection invites the viewer to examine the subtle nuances over a generation between two image makers. Laura’s curation of scanned slides from her father’s collection with the pairing of her own images illustrate the similarities and differences in composition, subject matter, and formal execution. These images comment on the notions of family, the inheritance of creativity, the thankfulness for one who went before, the acknowledgement of who is looking and what are they seeing, the formal elements of photography and prolific subject matter.

Daniel Vautour began his career in photography in his father’s studio at a young age. He then went on to teach the medium while working as a commercial photographer. His images show a rich interest in composition, colour, and include a variety of landscapes and portraits. Laura Vautour, his daughter, enrolled in a University photography class to better communicate with her father as he ages. Here she learned the technical processes of the medium, and her images often blur subject matter, order the image, include line work and explore the materiality of the image.

Categories
Exhibitions 2020 - 2021

Perspectives

By Farhad Omarzad

In this series, I used photography to capture both the beauty and struggle I have witnessed in different countries I have travelled.

The social hierarchies of humans and animals vary greatly from culture to culture. In Greece, donkeys are used as beasts of burden to carry tourist luggage, whereas in Istanbul, animals run free and can find refuge in local shops. London is similar to Western societies where animals are heavily domesticated. As for the other residents of these countries, the energy is entirely different in each city. London’s high energy brought in crowds everywhere you went. A more reserved and simple lifestyle of fishing, playing music in empty streets, and selling food from small carts could be seen in the less wealthy countries I visited.

The attitudes towards life in these very different countries each offer something unique that should be implemented into our own lives. By looking through these small windows there is an opportunity to reflect on our regard for other life, slow down and find joy in the everyday, and accept new curious cultures.

Farhad Omarzad is a published Guelph lifestyle photographer. In his personal practice, Farhad’s experience with both rural and urban environments provides him with a unique perspective on the natural and undiscovered world around us. Travelling and meeting new people has been an opportunity to expand his understanding of different cultures beyond his own. Being of Afghan heritage, he is inspired by photographers like Steve McCurry who document vanishing cultures of places the viewer has never visited.

Categories
Exhibitions 2020 - 2021

De Natura

Emma Sultmanis

As the natural world becomes infiltrated with digital technology, human perception of nature will inevitably be affected, for better or for worse. My interests in nature, ecological preservation, and systems of memory stem from my upbringing in Muskoka and Algonquin Park; the foundation for my location-based practice. Using my background in biology, environmental science, and botany, I aim to shed light on the climate issues and anthropogenic impacts that threaten the species, ecosystems and places that inspire my art. My work examines the ambiguity of memory, the dichotomy between nature and technology, and the disenchantment of humans with the environment. Through drawing, painting, and printmaking, I aim to explore how experiences grounded in physical versus digital interactions support different ways of knowing an object or space. 

My body of work, along with this gallery space, aims to address the disconnection between humans and the environment by encouraging appreciation for and reconnection with nature. Recently I have been working in collaboration with natural elements and allowing nature to be the artist. This involves frottage and use of live specimens to create lines and shapes that represent nature as truthfully as possible. Other works included in this space are reflective of photographic distortion and examine how technology can both enhance and obscure one’s experience in nature.

See more on Instagram at @emmasultyart 

Missed Moments II, 14 x 20″, Lithograph on paper
Pinus resinosa, 40 x 60″, Graphite on paper
Distance: Observations During a Pandemic, 5 x 5″ panels, Collage and acrylic on panel
Ontario is in Danger Too, 14 x 20″, Intaglio etched zinc plate with aquatint, soft-ground leaves, and chine colle on Fabriano Rosaspina paper
Algonquin, 30 x 40 x 2″, Acrylic on canvas
Far Away, 40 x 60″
You Guide Me, 14 x 20″, Intaglio etch on zinc plate with aquatint on Fabriano Rosaspina Paper
Cross, 15 x 22.5″, Screen Print on Stonehenge Paper
Seek, 20 x 30 x 1″, Acrylic paint on canvas
To Look Closely, 18 x 24″, Pencil crayon frontage and ink on paper
Categories
Uncategorized

This is a test exhibition

Victorinus Constantius de bona speranza

December 5 – 10, 2020

This is really the test

Victorinus Constantius de bona speranza
November 12 – 19, 2020

Level

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Elevation

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Height

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Categories
Exhibitions 2020 - 2021

Art Store

Art Store is a student run art store featuring items created by students at the University of Guelph. For more information on an individual item or artist, click on the image below or send a message to @zavitzartstore.

Categories
Exhibitions 2020 - 2021

xX_My_Paintings_UWU_Xx@hotmail.com

Hannah Paige

Gallery View:

Artist statement:

My work aims to capture the technological world and internet culture through the medium of paint. Often times, my art is used to critique and relate art conventions and art history to digital landscapes. This practise also stems from the impulsion to document fleeting digital phenomenon that may be erased by technological advances. The digital images presented in the medium of paint creates a humorous meta-narrative involving the viewer and the image. Exhibition xX_My_Paintings_UWU_Xx@hotmail.com reflects these themes. I have dubbed this genre of art Cyber Pop Art, and I hope that these pieces can become a catalyst to modern-day pop art.

To begin, the piece Untitled – Paint is a critique on painting and photography in the form of an old Windows XP laptop. The painting depicts the classic windows desktop photograph Bliss being obscured by the open Paint software window. Within the painting window is a an abstract painting form. This is nostalgic for kids from the early 2000s, as it was common for children to scribble within the paint application and then fill the lines in with colour using the paint bucket tool.

Forged Painting is a meta painting replicated from a screenshot from the video game Animal Crossing Wild World (2005) on the Nintendo DS. Within the game, the player may purchase paintings that are duplicates of paintings from real-life art historical canon. For instance, the player may purchase paintings such as Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Georges Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss, and many more. When purchasing these works, the player must decipher if the painting is the original or a forgery by identifying the discrepancies of the painting. If the player buys a forged work and tries to sell it to the shopkeepers Timmy and Tommy, the player will be presented with the text “This is a forged painting!…forged.”

After Edward Ruscha is a parody work on pop artist Edward Ruscha’s OOF. Additionally, the title After Edward Ruscha is a play on Sherrie Levine’s work After Edward Weston, where Levine appropriated photographs by Edward Weston in order to give new context to the work. Much like the original OOF painting, After Edward Ruscha displays the three-letter word POG in virgin ultramarine blue and light cadmium yellow paint. The word POG is used in the gaming community, particularly on the online streaming platform Twitch. POG stands for play of the game and is an abbreviation of PogChamp. These words are used in order to refer to excitement or hype. If a viewer were to type :pog: into a Twitch chat, the text would convert into an emoticon of a man’s face filled with surprise and excitement. This is similar to typing “<3” in a text and having it convert into a heart emoticon. With that being said, the canvas parallels the keyboard. The word POG on the canvas elicits the emoticon in the viewers brain, much like the typed work on the keyboard present the emoticon in a chat. Similar to OOF, the painting does not need to depict an image because the text forces the image to appear in the viewers mind rather than visually in front of them.

Wingdings is based on an old Windows 95 screen. The aim of this piece was to document the aesthetic of old desktops. This work documents the iconic old teal green desktop background that was common in mid 90s desktop computers, akin to modern day colour block paintings by Piet Mondrian, Mark Rothko and Yves Klein. Furthermore, there is a secret message written in the font WingDings on the desktop that reads “LOL this generic green background was actually really hard to paint. not as hard as these wingding characters tho. what even are these XD?”. This work was created as a companion piece to Untitled – Paint. Displayed on a smaller canvas than Untitled – Paint, the work shows the changing of screen display sizes as technology has advanced.

Finally, the three Word Art paintings are pieces taken from a wider incomplete series of paintings that I have been working on that reflect the word art options from Microsoft Publisher 2007.

Instagram: @xx_hann_art_xx