Past
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Russell Young - Dreamland
GdB III 24 Oct - 12 Nov 2024 It was in the 80s that British photographer Russell Young first lent his eye to celebrity culture. The assignment was photographing George Michael for the sleeve of an album called “Faith”. That job launched a career and soon Russell was shooting musicians like Morrissey, Bjork, Springsteen, Dylan, REM, New Order, The Smiths, Diana Ross, Paul Newman and many other celebrities. The next natural step was directing music videos; Russell directed a hundred music videos during the heyday of MTV.
Ten years into his career, Russell started painting, but his work remained private. Until 2003, when Young showed his first series of paintings called Pig Portraits, this first show sold out. Young has risen to be an internationally acclaimed pop artist, creating larger than life silkscreen paintings of images from history and pop culture.
“My work is sort of the soundtrack to my life, loves, experiences and influences. My method of working is to search, destroy and create. The images of this series have been collected from newspaper cuttings, e-bay, long correspondence with police departments throughout the world or even given by celebrities themselves. The idea to create “anti-celebrity” portraits was probably a reaction to my former career. However, they turned out to be even more beautiful and iconic. There is undeniably this attitude that is very real, in your face, a beauty that is hard to ignore. These would be my heroes that are missing from Art History.”
Russell Young has become one of the most collected and sought after artists of our time. Celebrities and the most discriminating collectors like Abby Rosen, the Getty’s, Elizabeth Taylor, David Hockney, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, David Bowie and President Barack Obama have added Russell’s works to their collections. His larger than life screenprint images from history and popular culture are compelling, daunting, and undeniable. Read more -
Heidi Spector - Eternal Optimist
GdB III 26 Sep - 15 Oct 2024 Heidi Spector is a geometric artist best known for her exploration of minimalism as studied through lines, repetition, color and reflection. Spector’s work has been the subject of numerous solo and group shows including exhibitions in Montreal, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, and New York. Her work is included... Read more -
Mike Hammer - Songs for Absolution
GdB Toronto 12 - 24 Sep 2024 Mike Hammer is a contemporary abstract painter who explores color and the tridimensional nature of paint. Hammer creates his sculptural multicolored ‘blob’ paintings by meticulously pouring acrylic paint from squeeze tubes. Each ‘blob’ ring interacts with those above and below resulting in unique and vibrant interplays. Hammer’s paintings celebrate the... Read more -
Scott Pattinson
GdB Toronto 1 - 18 Jun 2024 The work of painter Scott Pattinson (b. 1974, Toronto) may be seen in the context of an early 21st century resurgence of formalism unburdened by the meta-narratives of modern abstraction. Pattinson’s thematically organized oil paintings are micro-narratives of collective experience articulated through colour, texture and an exacting spatial sensibility. Pattinson... Read more -
Peter Horvath
GdB Toronto 11 - 28 May 2024 Peter Horvath is a photo-based and New Media artist. Embracing digital technologies at the birth of the Web, he created audio/video narratives through selective editing of film footage and the use of his early collages. His new work similarly focuses on deconstructing and recontextualizing imagery through assemblage, drawing from personal... Read more -
Boudro
GdB III 18 Apr - 6 May 2024 Boudro is a Montreal artist with a New York heart and is unquestionably part of the pop art movement. His work integrates artistic expression, culture, consumerism, and advertising. Like an ode to markers of time, Boudro uses colour and contrast to immortalize the practices and behaviours of an entire generation.... Read more -
Fabian Jean
GdB III 28 Mar - 15 Apr 2024 As Fabian Jean enters the status of a mid-career artist, his work is being recognized by Canadian institutions. This past year, he was invited to speak at St Thomas University and a softcover and hardcover monograph on Jean’s work with essays and an interview is currently being published by the... Read more -
Kevin Sonmor
GdB III 28 Mar - 15 Apr 2024 Kevin Sonmor has been exhibiting his paintings in museums and galleries in Canada, the United States and Europe for more than twenty-five years. This vast body of work has been a devoted exploration or map-making of the contemporary condition seen through the lens of the history of painting, in epic... Read more -
Michael Harrington
GdB Toronto 7 - 26 Dec 2023 Michael Harrington is a Canadian painter living in Ottawa, ON. He creates narrative-based paintings, creating scenes that are dark, cinematic and open to interpretation. His painting style, while representational, is not easy to pin down, as it is a sort of crossover of realism and folk art. Both Edward Hopper... Read more -
David Drebin
GdB Toronto 16 Nov - 5 Dec 2023 David Drebin is celebrated for creating spectacular shots of dazzling subjects. His photographs tell a tale; starring elusive femme fatales in dreamlike cityscapes, these “dreamscapes” evoke emotions, psychological perspectives and insightful reflections into the viewers’ own fantasies, imagination and experience. Often described as epic, spectacular, dramatic, cinematic and dreamy, his... Read more -
James Lahey: Mind, Memory and the Play of History
GdB Toronto 19 Oct - 7 Nov 2023 James Lahey is a Canadian artist living in Toronto where he maintains his studio. He completed his BFA at York University in 1984 with studies in Art and Architecture in Italy (1982) through a joint programme with York University, Toronto and Lowell University, Massachusetts. In 1986 he obtained a certificate... Read more -
David Wightman
GdB Toronto 5 - 24 Oct 2023 David Wightman (born in 1980, Stockport, Greater Manchester, UK) is a British painter and printmaker based in London, UK. He creates beautiful paintings and prints of fictional landscapes. The surfaces of his paintings are made from textured wallpaper collaged with a technique similar to marquetry. Colour and composition are the... Read more -
Barbara Cole
GdB III 5 - 24 Oct 2023 Cole was born in 1953, in Toronto, Canada. Cole, who has often been referred to as an inventor, uses a raw, hands-on photographic process which strongly follows her belief that the opportunities of photography are virtually endless. Since the early 80’s, she has channeled an appreciation for the camera itself.... Read more -
Michael Moebius
GdB Toronto 21 Sep - 3 Oct 2023 Michael Moebius, born in 1968 in Pirna, Germany, is an acclaimed artist who ascended from the challenges of communist East Germany. Amid these challenges, he boldly illustrated characters such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and the Terminator—icons deemed controversial in his homeland. While society’s expectations directed him towards engineering, an... Read more -
Zhang He
GdB II 7 - 26 Sep 2023 Through a dynamic language of abstraction, Zhang’s oil paintings convey a visceral engagement with the surrounding natural environment while evoking the depth of human emotions. With a calligraphic execution, his bold and gestural brushstrokes demonstrate a unique physicality and spontaneity, which resonate with early influences of Abstract Expressionism and the... Read more
