"Code 3 (No Dangleberries): Christopher Arnoldin, Yechel Gagnon, and Doreen Wittenbols"
2004-04-14 until 2004-04-25
Gallery 1313
Toronto, ON, CA Canada

Gallery 1313 is pleased to present Code 3 (No Dangleberries). New works form a new perspective, paintings and plywood reliefs by Christopher Arnoldin, Yechel Gagnon, and Doreen Wittenbols. Doreen paints with a small television in the room. The show is a soap opera. It is doubtful whether she ever actually watches the program at all. It is the dialogue that keeps her perched at the canvas on a swivel chair. As if entering a minefield, Yechel dresses in a full suit of armour. Gloves, goggles, soundproof earmuffs, dust mask, construction boots, and a sealed door. Despite the obvious labour and physicality of both the task at hand and the materials employed, she is in a core all to herself, at least when using the router. Christopher has an affinity to sound and an efficient approach to painting. A container with acrylic paint and medium is held in the air and played like a maraca with a lot of physical jerking.

Doreen generally paints psychosexual imagery using staged and found photographs as a reference. Yechel uses plywood as a medium since it is the archetype of an industrial material composed entirely of a natural product. Christopher often draws in secrecy (as an employee). At the best of times hes stealing and creating a moment simultaneously. Doreen paints her friends situated within hot and absurd porn imagery from the 70s. These paintings read as adult fantasies, ABBA nightmares and Mary Tyler Moore. Meanwhile, Yechel plows fields of joy into flat lifeless sheets of ply and Christopher draws over and over with the same black markers. He paints drawings and he draws paintings.

As a collective the works seem very different but there are knots eminent that metaphorically unite them, whether it be a place, path, or fantasy. They are CODE 3 forever.

Christopher Arnoldin, Yechel Gagnon and Doreen Wittenbols are honour graduates from the Ontario College of Art and Design. All three artists shared studio spaces together in Montreal at Concordia University where they obtained their Master of Fine Arts.

Biographies

Christopher Arnoldin was awarded the Sir Edmund Walker Scholarship from O.C.A.D. for his post-graduate studies. He has exhibited his paintings in numerous solo and group exhibitions in both Montreal and Toronto. His work can be found in several private and corporate collections. Arnoldin is represented by The Fran Hill Gallery in Toronto. He is currently collaborating on a project for the upcoming multi-venue Wade project.

Yechel Gagnon has received fellowships and grants from Le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and du Maurier Arts. Her work has been reviewed in Canadian Art, Globe & Mail and Vie des Arts. Upcoming solo exhibitions include Grunt Gallery in Vancouver, Galerie Tournesol in Southern France and the McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton. Yechel Gagnon is represented by the Moore Gallery in Toronto.

Doreen Wittenbols received awards, fellowships and scholarships throughout her undergraduate and graduate studies, including the academic Governor-Generals medal. Wittenbols is also the recipient of both provincial and national grant funding from Le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Canada Council for the Arts. Her paintings have been presented in solo and group exhibitions in Montreal and Toronto.

IMAGE
Yechel Gagnon
Poetic Marsh, 2001

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for Canada

Other Important Exhibitions in Toronto