October 4, 2014 to January 11, 2015
Ontario-based artist Gary Spearin began his iNifiNiTi project in 2007, and it continues to grow. iNifiNiTi is a large series of twenty-four-by-twenty-inch-sized oil-on-canvas paintings. Each one is more-or-less abstract in nature, but may contain shapes, repeated lines or patterns, which create images that appear close to recognizable things, brains, bird nests, intestines, and such. Each time the artist installs the work in its grid format he changes the arrangement and number of the components.
Simply put, the paintings are meditations on time: our experience and perception of time. Each painting is titled with a date, but not the date on which it was painted, confounding a straightforward reading. Spearin also marshalls the tropes of expressionism – strong colour, paint-laden brushstrokes, etc. – but cuts them loose from service to emotional or psychological meaning, so they become free agents. Thus, for the most part, Spearin’s paintings resist specific interpretation and categorization.
Long-time visitors to the Kelowna Art Gallery might recall that Gary Spearin showed his NAME PAINTINGS here in 2004, an exhibition produced in collaboration with the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa, Ontario, and the Art Gallery of the Esplanade Arts and Heritage Centre, in Medicine Hat, Alberta. His iNifiNiTi paintings evolved from the NAME PAINTINGS, extending some of the artist’s desire to involve the viewer in the process of meaning making, rather than presenting them with a fait accompli.
Spearin holds a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, from 1981, and an MFA from the University of Guelph, in Guelph, Ontario, from 1997.
Opening Reception
Friday, October 3, 7 to 9 pm
Opening remarks at 7 pm. Artist will be in attendance.
