Nouvelles
Battat exhibits John Ancheta and Stephen Talasnik in Milan
Publié 09 mars, 2010
Fielding the Uncanny brings together the work of established American artist Stephen Talasnik and emerging Canadian artist John Ancheta. Talasnik, who has shown extensively in the USA and Europe, creates intricate and fantastical quasi-architectural / organic structures which fascinate and intrigue, while Ancheta’s hazy abstracted landscapes provide obscure fictive spaces one can become lost within. Each artist builds imaginative worlds for us to explore, but in both cases, although the imagery is slightly familiar, it is also elusive and often delightfully intangible.
The paintings and drawings exhibited by John Ancheta form part of his Aether series. ‘Ether’, whether defined as an anaesthetic – providing escape into another world of sleep – or a reference to the heavens or upper regions of space, when applied to Ancheta’s paintings allows an understanding of foggy otherworldly spaces, ephemeral forms, and escapist reveries. They emit an eerie dream-like sensation.
Stephen Talasnik’s sculptures and drawings also embody aspects of the uncanny – they resemble architectural, scientific and organic structures, but are in fact constructions of fiction. The forms appear as intuitive, imaginative coalescences, emerging almost transiently from the artist’s subjective process of creation. Often asymmetrical, sometimes submerged in resin, Talasnik’s forms appear as if they could orbit away into space or are waiting, frozen in gestation.
Experienced as a whole, the exhibition becomes a subjective imaginary for viewers to question, explore and immerse themselves within.
Bio: John Ancheta
Drawing from his background in set/sound design for theatre and film, John Ancheta’s paintings coalesce scientific imaging, landscape, and digital abstraction in large-scale cinematic mise-en-scènes. Ancheta works primarily from found images culled from open source digital archives and film stills, but in the process of painting, he transmutes these images into imagined fragmentary topographies that imbue the cartographic quotidian with a near mythological significance. Often working with variations of a single image, Ancheta orchestrates serial compositions that explore the psychic dimensions of temporal and spatial simultaneity.
Born in Long Beach, California in 1973, John Ancheta spent much of his childhood on a communal farm in rural Northern British Columbia. Ancheta studied sound engineering at the Institute of Communication Arts in Vancouver, BC (1993) and Fine Arts (1997-2000) and Philosophy (2004-2007) at Concordia University. He currently lives and works in Montreal, Canada.
Bio: Stephen Talasnik
“Rooted in the aesthetics of architectural infrastructure, my work in drawing, painting, and sculpture address the essential visual language of constructed anatomy. With references to the history of photography, print information, and engineering, I invent a personal narrative that suggests actual function and design, although it is ultimately visual fiction.
I am primarily interested in the gestural capacity of the straight line and all structures are dependent on intuitive decision making rather than hard math. All sculpture is made without preliminary drawing and is organic in that an individual construct expands from a single point addressing the repetitive sensuality of the variable grid. The paintings allude to the history of documentation and scientific explanation. As fantastical color representations they serve as a compendium or encyclopedia of mind wanderings. My drawings reference the history of the visionary architect; imaginary structures that encapsulate an invented historical codex of construction. All works intersect with a reliance on the ideational capacities of drawing, an art that remains at the core of visual conceptualizing.”
Originally from Philadelphia, Stephen Talasnik attended the Rhode Island School of Design and the Tyler School of Art in Rome, Italy. Although formally trained in design his work in drawing, painting, and sculpture is the result of a self taught process. In addition to his time in Rome, he also lived for 3 years in Tokyo, Japan and did extensive travel throughout the Far East studying indigenous hand built architecture. In addition to the US, he has shown extensively in Germany, Austria, and The Netherlands and his work is included in such public collections as the Albertina (Vienna) British Museum (London), and the Staatliche Museen of Berlin (Germany). He lives and works in New York City.
Interview with John Ancheta on Inside the Frozen Mammoth
Publié 26 février, 2010
Check out Kit Malo’s interview with exhibiting artist John Ancheta on the blog Inside the Frozen Mammoth. www.thefrozenmammoth.com
Book launch for John Ancheta publication
Publié 25 février, 2010
Join us during the vernissage of John Ancheta: Aquacades for the book launch of an accompanying exhibition publication created by the award winning graphic design team Feed (www.studiofeed.ca). The book will be on sale ($20) during the opening.
John Ancheta exhibition opening this week!
Publié 22 février, 2010
Join us thursday evening 6-8pm for the vernissage of John Ancheta’s exhibition Aquacades! The exhibition will run until April 10th.
Last week - Goya & Callot: Regards sur la guerre!
Publié 18 février, 2010
If you haven’t yet, be sure to come check out our current exhibition Goya & Callot: Looking at War. The show’s last day is this Saturday!
Sophie Jodoin in Blanc @ Atelier Punkt
Publié 16 février, 2010
See new work by Sophie Jodoin in the group exhibition Blanc at Atelier Punkt. January 15 – March 7, 2010. http://atelierpunkt.com
John Ancheta @ Galerie d'art d'Outremont
Publié 25 janvier, 2010
Battat Contemporary exhibiting artist John Ancheta will open a solo exhibition entitled Land at the Galerie d’art d’Outemont on February 4th at 5:30-7:30pm. The exhibition runs until February 28.
Check out Ancheta’s exhibition Aquacades at Battat Contemporary when it opens February 25th, 6pm.
Une conférence de Dr. Hilliard T. Goldfarb, le 23 janvier, 14:00
Publié 19 janvier, 2010
Goya, Les désastres de la guerre :Désolation, dépravation et la mort. Y a-t-il de l’espoir au beau milieu de l’horreur?
Samedi le 23 janvier, 14h00 @ Battat Contemporary (en anglais)
Dr. Hilliard T. Goldfarb est conservateur au Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal (MBAM) depuis 1998.
Il a été le concepteur et l’organisateur de la très importante exposition internationale Richelieu : l’art et le pouvoir, (MBAM et Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, septembre 2002-avril 2003) et De Fontainebleau au Louvre : dessins français du XVIIe siècle (1989-1990) pour le Cleveland Museum of Art, l’Université Harvard et le Musée des beaux-arts du Canada. Dr. Hilliard T. Goldfarb a également réalisé, parmi d’autres projets au sein du MBAM, Grands maîtres italiens de Raphaël à Tiepolo. La collection du Musée des beaux-arts de Budapest, et de nombreuses expositions d’estampes et de dessins. Récemment, il fut commissaire de Grandeur nature : peinture et photographie des paysages américains et canadiens de 1860 à 1918, (MBAM et Vancouver Art Gallery, 2009-2010).
Avant d’entrer au Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Dr. Hilliard T. Goldfarb a été conservateur en chef des collections au Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, à Boston, de 1991 à 1998, après avoir été conservateur de l’art européen au Hood Museum of Art du Dartmouth College, Hanover (New Hampshire), de 1985 à 1990, et conservateur adjoint au Département des estampes et dessins du Cleveland Museum of Art, de 1980 à 1985. Durant ces mêmes années, il a également occupé un poste de professeur adjoint à la Case Western Reserve University, à Cleveland.
En 2009, Dr. Hilliard T. Goldfarb a reçu les insignes d’Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de la République française. Entre autres distinctions et prix, il a obtenu des bourses de la Florence Gould Foundation, du National Endowment for the Arts et du National Endowment for the Humanities des États-Unis, de la Andrew W. Mellon Foundation et de la Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
A lecture by collector Irwin Browns
Publié 04 janvier, 2010
- A Collector – of Prints
- Saturday, January 16, 2010, 2pm @ Battat Contemporary (In English)
Battat Contemporary is pleased to present a lecture by Irwin Browns, a Montreal art collector specializing in prints. Mr. Browns will be providing a rare glimpse into his experience collecting art over the last 37 years. Mr. and Mrs. Browns’s impressive collection has been showcased in various exhibitions, and in 2007 the MMFA presented exhibition of their collection of prints entitled, Images of Humanity. The Browns also supported the founding of the Graphic Arts Centre at the MMFA, including the attached Freda and Irwin Browns Gallery.
Marion Wagschal at the Fofa Gallery
Publié 04 janvier, 2010
Future exhibiting artist Marion Wagschal (showing at Battat from April 15-May 29) is currently exhibiting at the Fofa Gallery at Concordia University. The Fofa exhibition, entitled Private Views runs from January 5th -February 5th 2010.
For more information see: http://fofagallery.concordia.ca