Bradley Harms
Works / Exhibitions / CV / News
Summer Group Show – Renée Duval, Bradley Harms and Jason McKechnie
–
ANGELL GALLERY is pleased to present its Summer Group Show, debuting in Toronto the works of three young and accomplished Canadian artists: Renée Duval, Bradley Harms and Jason McKechnie from July 27th to August 19th. The overwhelming current of this exhibition is one of fresh and exciting contemporary work, with consistently innovative and suprising conceptually-based abstract elements.
Renée Duval is a Montreal-based painter whose recent work plays upon traditions of landscape imagery. Focusing on the details of her landscape, Duval's paintings zoom in on the branches, buds, leaves and other organic elements of the trees she portrays. Her paintings become as much about the evocative power of the landscape as they are about the process of viewing natural environments from a personally subjective angle.
Bradley Harms has had several successful shows in Calgary, where he is based, and is beginning to garner national media attention for his work. Working with carefully applied acrylic paint, Harms creates detailed abstract works that look like they must have been created by a machine, but are all done by hand. Delicate stripes serve as background to his paintings, while the foreground consists of bright, outlined circles that pull from traditions of op-art, but with their own contemporary twist.
Jason McKechnie, who is a recent transplant from Los Angeles to Toronto, works with abstract paintings that deal with the tradition of "pattern and decoration". His works are highly stylized, and derive their sources from conceptual notions of beauty and pleasure, as well as myriad popular visual modes, ranging from fashion to film. Through a delicate process of layering, McKechnie creates lush, colourful and dense abstractions that have elements that seem to pop out while others melt and flow.