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STATEMENT
Within a cityscape, one can get wrapped up in the self and day to day tasks, becoming solitary despite the fact that cities are in deed set to breed connectivity.
The urban environment as described by one person, though quite translatable to many: “I live in a landscape that is bleak, I live in a mindset that is weak, I live in a city that is gray, I live in a box though it is called a house. I live and live and
live and then I turn and see colours that break apart this mundane existence. What is this fantastical creation? This wonder to my eyes, this bright horizon that turns like a carousel of uplifting joyousness and wonder?”
Juan Carlos Noria, Patrick Thompson and IAMRURIK are seminal to today’s artistic landscape, and are exemplary in their vision. Not satisfied with merely using their art as social commentary within one confined space, they have chosen to affect their physical landscape and to brighten the world of others, using their talents to interact with an entire community.
La Petite Mort Gallery is proud to present round two of a show that happened a decade ago. LPM’s director showcased these amazing artists in a traveling exhibit to O
ttawa, New York and Paris. After ten years we are pleased that we have remained connected to each other, successfully evolving within the art world and towards each other. As creators of inspiration, using simple lines to grow a nation, we love them extra lots! - Christina Anastassopoulos, 2010
JUAN CARLOS NORIA:
A confluence of cultures and contradictions, Juan Carlos Noria is a painter for our times. Born in Caracas, Venezuela he carries his Latin American sensibility on his sleeve. As a teen growing up in Ottawa, Canada, he became an accomplished figure skater. Grace and lines were an obsession. So, too were his ideas of subversion. He fell out of skating after hitting the rigid class structure of the sport, finding comfort (and discomfort) in visual art, on the streets with a paint can, postering, skateboarding, fleeing police. A strange opportunity then came. A world tour with Disney on Ice. It heightened his sense of absurdity, humour and anger, sharpened his visual and social awareness. Arriving back in Ottawa, he hung up the skates and his career took
flight with live painting performances. So proficient from his days of graffiti, he quickly earned a reputation for highly resolved canvases produced in front of appreciative crowds. Through these events in various venues, Juan Carlos also ensured a showcase for other young Ottawa artists, raising the bar and pushing them to achieve with him.
PAT THOMPSON:
Canadian artist Patrick Thompson's paintings, wall drawings, prints and installations, are investigations of the idea of information; explored through mass media, public space, history and the dynamics of culture, defined equally by their range and their lyrical visual language.
Highly esteemed for pushing the boundaries of street art, he has painted outdoors under the pseudonym Evoke
throughout North and Central America, Europe, and Asia. Evoke is often placed into the "Canadian School" of street artists including Other, Labrona, and Thesis Sahib, a group known for their inspired improvisations and openness towards freeform mark making. Evoke's own creative process develops through a self-coined process he refers to as "mistakism", whereby the artist allows a memory, feeling, sentence, or some other bite of information to spark the beginning of a particular work. Imagery follows, inspired by the 'in-between' places found throughout the Canadian landscape, converging into dreamlike scenes. This union creates a pictorial space where imaginary characters, forms and marks can interact in a place that is whimsical as well as charged. In 2007, Evoke created "Ishtar Gate" in collaboration with artists Derek Mehaffey and Juan Carlos Noria for; BAC! 07 International Festival of Contemporary Art in Barcelona; Edition VIII. His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions worldwide including; The Royal Ontario Museum; Institute for Contemporary Culture in Toronto, Luminato, the Singapore Contemporary Arts Museum, Desert Generation at Artist House Gallery in Jerusalem, Lombardi Gallery in Austin Texas and INOPERABLE Gallery in Vienna Austria. Wall painting installation work includes Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada, Quest University in Squamish, British Columbia, Canada, SAW Gallery in Ottawa, Canada and Hualien, Taiwan.
Patrick is the co-founder of the Embassy of Imagination, a mobile art school that uses visual art as a tool for empowerment, connecting remote First Nations communities with new ideas in visual art.
IAMRURIK:
amrurik. . .is indeed a hard brave artist to find, in the streets, the malls, the sewers or mountain-tops. Revealing, only to heroically relieve him self on the gorgon of convention. Poised at the brink of an era baptizesd in flames, bearing not kerosene, but a feast of friends. With razors to wrists, to quench the bone dry kiss of a distinguished age, dry-heaving with political-correctness. Armed only with a soft golden gauntlet of truth too fist feed the beloved obfuscated buzzing bees; to not to weakly reconcile with the hive, but rather escort them to fresh flowers, to suckle rarest beauty from a common stone, and stone beauty to the common suck. Thank u . . . iamrurik
Thank you,
Guy Berube, director
La Petite Mort Gallery
306 Cumberland Street
Ottawa, ON K1N 7H9
