GROUP EXHIBITION | Featuring Gavin Lynch, M.E. Sparks and Corri-Lynn Tetz
Mónica Reyes Gallery is pleased to invite you to "Road Trip: A Painting Exhibition" with works by Gavin Lynch, Corri-Lynn Tetz and M.E. Sparks, Opening Reception on Thursday, November 14 from 5-8 PM
The exhibition title “Road Trip” alludes to the magnificence of a road trip, connecting oneself to a multitude of different surroundings and environments. Gavin Lynch, a painter based in Wakefield, QC, returned to the West Coast where he once lived while completing his BFA at Emily Carr University (2009). This recent trip around BC and California was the source of inspiration not only for these new works, but for the show we are presenting at the gallery.
The painted landscape is of essence in this exhibition. Corri-Lynn Tetz' unidentified figures are carefully placed within landscape, not interacting with it but constituting an integral part of it – a feature especially enticing in the two small scale works presented in this show. Whereas Gavin Lynch investigates the formation or composition of landscape and nature through his collage-like approach to painting and added elaborate dimensional sand elements; M.E. Sparks only leaves the viewer with the hint of representational spaces, opening up an imaginative sphere of form and colour.
Gavin Lynch(Wakefield, Quebec) is quickly becoming a key player in the new vision of landscape painting that is invigorating this archetypal Canadian genre. Employing a collage approach to the picture plane, Lynch resists pictorial and painterly continuity in favor of unexpected and often conflicting combinations of elements, some derived from memory, others from the artist’s imagination. Sharply delineated forms are juxtaposed with fluid areas, while highly stylized rocks and trees are painted in naturalistic colours. Wavering between material flatness and pictorial depth, luminosity and darkness, and abstraction and representation, these paintings exude an energizing tension that invites extended looking. Gavin Lynch holds a BFA from Emily Carr University (2009) and a MFA from the University of Ottawa (2012). He is the recipient of awards and grants from various organizations, including the Canada Council for the Arts (2014), the Ontario Arts Council (2013) and the province of Ontario (2011). In 2014 Lynch was a finalist in the RBC Painting Competition, which was exhibited at the Musée des Beaux Arts. His work has been exhibited across Canada, featured in Canadian Art magazine and is in various collections, including Simon Fraser University, TD Canada Trust and the City of Ottawa Permanent Collection. Lynch lives and works in Wakefield, Quebec, just outside of Ottawa.
Corri-Lynn Tetz (Calgary, AB) is interested in ritual, communal intimacy and strange mystical events; her paintings are drawn from the romantic histories of a figure in landscape and the seemingly endless possibilities of surface and form. Evoking memory or a distant, artificial arcadia, the affect is often more poetic than narrative - with bodies and nature activated through inventive figuration, high key and muted colour combinations, abstract interventions and intuitive gestures. Corri-Lynn Tetz lives and works in Montreal. She obtained her MFA at Concordia University (2015) and he BFA at Emily Carr University (2008). Her work was featured in the Magenta Foundation's publication Carte Blanche: A Survey of Canadian Painting and in 2012 she was a finalist in the RBC Painting Competition. Furthermore she is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation (2017), the Brucebo Foundation, Sweden (2016), or the Conseil des Art et des Lettres du Quebec (2015) among others. Most recently her work was featured in the touring exhibition American Fine Art " life's not fair and people don't act right" through the BBQLA, Los Angeles.
M.E. Sparks (Kenora, ON) explores the accumulated histories and intrinsic vibrancy of found objects and the vitality they achieve as painted forms. She is intrigued by the human tendency to animate the inanimate and, through her paintings, aims to evoke our inherent desire to give life to objects. Through an observational practice of painting from still life, Sparks explores the mysteriously charged space between subject and object, observer and observed. Sparks holds an MFA from Emily Carr University (2016) and BFA from NSCAD University, Halifax NS (2013). Recent shows include Pleated Fingers Parted, Fifty Fifty Arts Collective, Victoria (2019), some body anybody, South Main Gallery, Vancouver, (2019), Inside Out, SiteFactory, Vancouver (2018), Mother Tongue, Dynamo Arts Association, Vancouver (2018), near channels, Support, London ON (2018), and A Terrible Signal, Access Gallery, Vancouver (2017). Sparks is the recipient of various awards such as the Canada Council for the Arts: Research and Creation Grant (2018/19), finalist in the 2016 and 2017 RBC Painting Competitions and the Nancy Petry Foundation Award: Royal Canadian Academy of Arts & Joseph Plaskett Foundation. Furthermore, she did residencies in Canada, Germany and Finland and she currently works as Non-Regular Sessional Faculty at Emily Carr University.
