Abstractions actuelles
April 5 – 29, 2018
Vernissage: April 5th from 5 to 8 pm

Galerie D’Este is pleased to present Abstractions actuelles. Four Pan-Canadian artists are on the bill. All use an abstract pictorial language. But everyone creates a unique visual universe. Abstraction has the peculiarity of being both universal and singular.

In the paintings of Fiona Ackerman, Megan Krause, Eric Louie and Larissa Tiggelers, we find a common interest in bright colors and dynamic compositions. Indeed, with so much personality, these paintings certainly do not lend themselves to being displayed discretely in any ordinary private salon, they vaunt themselves. From canvas to canvas a wind blows, like a mistral, that lifts, folds or alters forms. Indeed, nothing in these images seems fixed. From the viewer’s point of view, the paintings also seem to preserve a link with reality: Tiggelers’ shaded corners, hidden landscapes by Krause and Louie, the vegetal motifs of Ackerman. Abstraction thus retains some echoes of reality, recognizable landmarks. As such, none of the artists respect the flat surface of the canvas; all carve out a space, a depth, a world apart. This is, however, where their points of intersection cease.

Fiona Ackerman Born in 1978 and originally from Montreal, Fiona Ackerman is a painter living and working in Vancouver, BC. Rooted in abstraction, she pushes her work in divergent directions to develop a stylistic language specific to the mood or conceptual objectives on which she is working. 

Megan Krause was born in Saskatoon in 1984. She lives and works in Winnipeg. Guided by intuition, she builds her abstractions from a feeling of uncertainty about our environment and its future.

Eric Louie was born in 1977 in Boston, he now lives and works in Vancouver, BC. Having previously worked in the genre of landscape, still life and portraiture, the artist’s former figurative habits sometimes emerge in his abstractions.

Larissa Tiggelers was born in 1986 and currently divides her time between Toronto and Calgary. Within her practice, she disregards standardized colour theory in order to embrace its fundamental unknowability, and to enter a place of quiet contemplation.