In the Garden | Mina Totino and Maggee Day
May 22 - June 29, 2021
We are excited to announce the exhibition “In the Garden” with works by Mina Totino and introducing Maggee Day.
“In the Garden” entwines works by well-established Vancouver artist Mina Totino and up and coming artist Maggee Day. The thought of the garden comprises and encompasses many phenomena of our daily lives. It is at this time of the year that the garden, whether it is a collection of small pots of flowers on a patio or a lavish backyard or public garden it is something that surrounds most of us daily, consciously or not.
Vibrant colors and strong brush strokes bring the semblance of a garden and nature inside the gallery space, emphasizing Maggee Day's approach for this exhibited series “Doorstep view”. In her painterly process Day depicts the view of her doorstep, a view from inside the home into the outside, into the garden inspiring bold abstract views.
Mina Totino's works presented in this exhibition are part of her most recent exploration of the monochrome resulting in monochrome works – not really being monochrome. The compositions defined by multilayers of color and tactile attributes elude any classification or predetermined associations, however, like a view in a garden, delicately evolving in front of your eyes - “[...] quiet, slow, enveloping, like a waltz; delicate, fragile, and on the verge of materiality breaking or losing thought or form. [...]”[i]
The layout of the individual works of Day and Totino throughout the gallery space is suggestive of the garden and full circle of nature, from subtle green tones in “Doorstep view 4” to “Doorstep view 7” to Totino's “Turkey Umber (Williamsburg)”, reminiscent of spring and blooming, decomposition, decay and renewal.
This marks Mina Totino's second exhibition with Monica Reyes Gallery and builds on the success of her show at the West Vancouver Museum. Totino is a Canadian painter based in Vancouver, BC. Her work was exhibited extensively nationally and internationally: notably in Vancouver at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Artspeak, SFU Galleries, Western Front, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and most recently the West Vancouver Art Museum. Internationally her work was shown at the Centro d'Arte Contemporanea, Ticino, Italy, Centre d'Art Centemporain and Dialogai Geneva, Switzerland, Latvian Center of Contemporary Art, Riga, Latvia, Canada House, London, UK and Galerie Likorfabrik, Berlin, Germany among others.
Maggee Day is a visual artist working predominantly in the medium of oil paint. She studied at OCAD University in Toronto, ON where she received her BFA (2016), and completed her MFA at Emily Carr University in Vancouver, BC (2020). Day’s work challenges traditional conventions of representational painting by exploring new ways to utilize tools in our contemporary painting world. She combines traditional painting techniques, rendering approaches from the digital realm, and loose vandalizing brushstrokes to create complex paintings that oscillate between illusionism and autonomous abstraction. Day has exhibited across Canada and was awarded the 2018 Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant in painting. Day lives and works in Vancouver, on the unceded land of the Coast Salish peoples. This exhibition marks the first with Monica Reyes Gallery.
[i]Mina Totino, “Artist Statement, Mina Totino, The Monochrome: or not really” in: The Eyes Have Walls, Nicole Ondre & Mina Totino, West Vancouver Art Museum, 2020, p. 14.
“In the Garden” entwines works by well-established Vancouver artist Mina Totino and up and coming artist Maggee Day. The thought of the garden comprises and encompasses many phenomena of our daily lives. It is at this time of the year that the garden, whether it is a collection of small pots of flowers on a patio or a lavish backyard or public garden it is something that surrounds most of us daily, consciously or not.
Vibrant colors and strong brush strokes bring the semblance of a garden and nature inside the gallery space, emphasizing Maggee Day's approach for this exhibited series “Doorstep view”. In her painterly process Day depicts the view of her doorstep, a view from inside the home into the outside, into the garden inspiring bold abstract views.
Mina Totino's works presented in this exhibition are part of her most recent exploration of the monochrome resulting in monochrome works – not really being monochrome. The compositions defined by multilayers of color and tactile attributes elude any classification or predetermined associations, however, like a view in a garden, delicately evolving in front of your eyes - “[...] quiet, slow, enveloping, like a waltz; delicate, fragile, and on the verge of materiality breaking or losing thought or form. [...]”[i]
The layout of the individual works of Day and Totino throughout the gallery space is suggestive of the garden and full circle of nature, from subtle green tones in “Doorstep view 4” to “Doorstep view 7” to Totino's “Turkey Umber (Williamsburg)”, reminiscent of spring and blooming, decomposition, decay and renewal.
This marks Mina Totino's second exhibition with Monica Reyes Gallery and builds on the success of her show at the West Vancouver Museum. Totino is a Canadian painter based in Vancouver, BC. Her work was exhibited extensively nationally and internationally: notably in Vancouver at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Artspeak, SFU Galleries, Western Front, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and most recently the West Vancouver Art Museum. Internationally her work was shown at the Centro d'Arte Contemporanea, Ticino, Italy, Centre d'Art Centemporain and Dialogai Geneva, Switzerland, Latvian Center of Contemporary Art, Riga, Latvia, Canada House, London, UK and Galerie Likorfabrik, Berlin, Germany among others.
Maggee Day is a visual artist working predominantly in the medium of oil paint. She studied at OCAD University in Toronto, ON where she received her BFA (2016), and completed her MFA at Emily Carr University in Vancouver, BC (2020). Day’s work challenges traditional conventions of representational painting by exploring new ways to utilize tools in our contemporary painting world. She combines traditional painting techniques, rendering approaches from the digital realm, and loose vandalizing brushstrokes to create complex paintings that oscillate between illusionism and autonomous abstraction. Day has exhibited across Canada and was awarded the 2018 Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant in painting. Day lives and works in Vancouver, on the unceded land of the Coast Salish peoples. This exhibition marks the first with Monica Reyes Gallery.
[i]Mina Totino, “Artist Statement, Mina Totino, The Monochrome: or not really” in: The Eyes Have Walls, Nicole Ondre & Mina Totino, West Vancouver Art Museum, 2020, p. 14.
