Patrick Dunford
January 14 - February 11, 2012
Galerie Laroche/Joncas is very pleased to present a solo exhibition of news paintings by Winnipeg born artist Patrick Dunford. This is the first solo exhibition of the artist with the gallery. His work was featured at the gallery in the group exhibition 'BRUT' in 2010 along with the works of Benjamin King and Justin Stephens.
The landscapes in these paintings portray the Great North Woods in northern New Hampshire. The natural forms in these works, which include mountains, trees, and lakes, articulate both an exploration of the genre of landscape painting, and a personal engagement with place. While the concrete reality of the world is visible, a more subjective and less tangible experience of place also emerges through the accumulation of paint.
Dunford was initially attracted to the area because of the interactions between humans and nature that have marked the land. Directly to the south are the White Mountains, which were made famous through the sublime paintings of the Hudson River School of artists. In contrast, the Great North Woods are portrayed by Dunford as a working landscape. This is true in a double sense: in terms of incompletion, and in terms of employment and resource extraction. Piles of wood are a common theme, and in fact, the artist accessed the places depicted using logging roads. These paintings go further than demonstrating the destructive impact of humans on nature. The labyrinthine pathways lead one’s gaze into a territory that remains hidden from view, suggesting the ultimate indifference of nature to our existence. Beyond the winding roads and wood piles, indeterminate patches of colour suggest a space that is less accessible, more mysterious, and in the end, unknowable. In these liminal spaces, the centrality of human presence is questioned.
Dunford’s work demonstrates an engagement with the formal language of painting. Perspective is stretched or condensed. Brushstrokes are bold in some areas, reticent in others. Layers of paint seep to the surface from below, hiding or exposing, while flecks of vivid colour impose upon more naturalistic hues. There are earthy greens, browns and blues that denote the material qualities of the land. There are artificial colours as well, some of which are quotations from the physical site, including the bright orange of construction signs and the fluorescent pink of ribbons tied to trees by land surveyors.
This fluency with the language of painting allows Dunford to explore the notion of marks as bearers of meaning. In this case, painted marks reveal the construction of landscapes, which imply the presence of a viewer but also suggest the difficulty of visually moving through and comprehending these spaces. What we see is not necessarily a resolved image, but a buildup of painted and metaphoric layers illuminating the connections between landscape as a historical genre and embodied experience of a specific place.
Patrick Dunford completed his MFA in 2011 at Concordia University. He presently lives and works in Montreal.
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Exhibitions
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012 | Jessica Campbell Learning to Live With Your Aloneness December 15 - January 26, 2013 | | | Yadir Quintana 'Femmes' November 3-December 8, 2012 | | | HKJB UPSIDEDOWNTURN September 12 - October 20, 2012 | | | Never Look Back, July 25 - September 1, 2012 | | | Jon Knowles Blood Oranges June 13 - July 23, 2012 | | | Jana Sterbak -Back Home- May 5-June 9 2012 | | | Benjamin King-You Are Leaving- March 30 - April 28, 2012 | | | Sean Montgomery - Avant Garage - February 18 - March 24, 2012 | | | > | Patrick Dunford. January 14 - February 11, 2012
| | | Jean-Philippe Harvey - These Things Take Time. November 17 - December 24, 2011 | | |
