 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
LES RAMSAY
Saturday, February 13, 2016
Click here for information on how you can become a member.
Join us for a studio visit with Les Ramsay.
Les Ramsay currently lives and works in Vancouver, BC. He’s studied visual arts at the Emily Carr University, at the Universitat de Politecnica in Valencia and has most recently completed his MFA in the Painting & Drawing department at Concordia University. Les Ramsay is currently represented by Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran, Montreal. His work has been exposed in Canada, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, and in the United States.
Artist Statement:
My studio-based practice includes collection and assemblage using domestic craft, textiles, and traditional painting mediums, which form large formal abstractions. These works are built to consider the materiality of the everyday and tropes within art history. Inspired by dimensional shifts within Cubism and Dada’s absurdist plays, my work merges popular culture and handmade domestic kitsch with abstraction, through collage and brushwork to generate layered formal outcomes. Humour and balance are key compositional activators, and a sense of formal ‘off-ness’ is a central balancing key within the work.
The current works refer to as well as questions the necessity of labor.
By introducing domestic embroideries, fabrics, bath and beach towels to the picture plane, these diverse textures and colour palettes evoke sensory memories fragmenting time and space. Vignettes of second hand cross-stitching and weaving are the visual focal points in the recent paintings. These windows of craft call to various modes and materials of representation and the oft-repeated imagery within the history of painting, from Dutch interiors to Canadian landscape. This play between craft and painting cycles through various stages of this work and re-activates core inquires into the medium of painting considered from a contemporary perspective.
Image Credit:
La Petite Baie, 2015. Oil and synthetic polymer with fabric collage, 60″ x 50″
Series Of Pleasant Thoughts, Distracting One’s Attention From The Present, 2014. Fabric collage, 72″ x 60″
