OPENING: SALON APR 25

We are happy to welcome spring into the city with another fantastic group show featuring the work of gallery favourites as well as emerging up-and-coming artists.  The show will include multiple works by the following artists:

G. Elliott Simpson
Troy Brooks
Peter Kashur
Lisa Graziotto
Stev'nn Hall
James Huctwith
Joey Bruini
Stephanie McGinn
Colin Davis
David Caesar
Robert Farmer
Kristen Johnson
*just added* Kisung Koh

Join us Thursday, April 25th between 6-9 to meet the artists and enjoy drinks and light refreshments or stop by during gallery hours between April 25th and May 12th.

KARDIONIC VERNISSAGE

For those of you unable to make the vernissage for Terry Gambarotto's ground breaking show KARDIONIC I wanted to share some of the fun of that night.  Enjoy.

If you are looking for something to do on Sunday's during this show and are intrigued by the cutting edge technology that Terry uses to create these visceral, organic works he will be in the gallery each week from 1 to 5 pm.

Looking for something to do on Valentines Day?  Terry and his trio will be performing both the KARDIONIC performance and will be adding the World Premiere of OPERATIONS!
To book a seat please give me a call at 416-406-6772.  Seating is limited so get yours reserved today!

Terry Gambarotto

End of the Evening from Queen Street East

Opening Evening Crowd

Kardionic Images

Opening Evening Crowd

Terry thanking his audience and friends and family.

Opening evening crowd!

Opening evening crowd!

 James Huctwith 

Works now represented by Pentimento Fine Art Gallery

The Miracle Of The Bread
20 x 30"
Oil On Canvas
2012

James Huctwith lives and works in downtown Toronto. Born in 1967, he was raised in rural Southern Ontario. He attended Cayuga Secondary School from 1981 until 1986, graduating with honours from Grade Thirteen. Afterwards, he studied fine art for three years at the University of Guelph, primarily interested in theory, history and architecture. After this, he lived in Vancouver in the early ‘90’s where he first began to paint and exhibit. Returning to Toronto in 1995, he began producing and exhibiting professionally with the O’Connor Gallery. He was with the gallery for a decade. The next three years were marked by personal upheaval and marked changes. In the spring of 2005, Huctwith joined Gallery Jones in Vancouver for two years, and produced a run of 'colder' non-figurative works, in contrast to the O’Connor shows which had been physically and emotionally explicit. Huctwith left O'Connor and joined Galerie Harwood near Montreal, also for two years, starting in 2006. The work produced for this gallery was marked primarily by considered re-interpretations of the still life genre. Feeling it was time to regroup and rediscover where he wanted to go with the work, Huctwith moved all his work back to Ontario, placing past work with Antonio Arch Fine Arts Ltd. in Toronto, and signing up with Galerie La Petite Mort in Ottawa. His first show there, in the fall of 2009, was a success. Both published and regularly reviewed, his work is collected both nationally and internationally. James is now represented by Pentimento Fine Art Gallery.  To view work that is available please visit our website at www.pentimento.ca .

Roadside
Oil On Canvas
22 x 28"
2011

Angel No 1
Oil On Canvas
2010
40 x 48"

KARDIONIC | OPERATIONS 
Exhibition and world premiere performance by Terry Gambarotto

Performance: February 14, 2013 at 8pm
Exhibition: January 31 - February 17, 2013
@ Pentimento Fine Art 1164 Queen Street East | Toronto ON M4M 1L4 pentimento.ca | 416 406 6772
Toronto, ON - Terry Gambarotto is pleased to announce the world premiere of his latest audio- visual performance OPERATIONS at Pentimento Fine Art on February 14, 2013 at 8pm.
This tech-no-influenced work visualizes and manipulates percussion patterns in abstract space.
He will also be performing his audiovisual performance KARDIONIC.
Kardionic has been performed at Arraymusic Studio (Toronto), In- teraccess Gallery (Toronto) and at the inaugural Understanding Visual Music Conference at Con- cordia University (Montreal).
Kardionic explores the organic, energetic and spiritual dimensions of the human heart.
The performance is held in conjunction with his his first solo exhibition at Pentimento Fine Art in Toronto, which opened on January 31, 2013 and is on view through February 17, 2013. The exhibition consists of two series of large scale, high resolution digital c prints derived from the av performance works.

Seating is limited.  Please call to reserve one!  416-406-6772

For video and more info:
http://foolskool.com/operations http://foolskool.com/kardionic
Contact:
Terry Gambarotto @ rocky@foolskool.com http://foolskool.com 416 703 9536
For Pentimento Fine Art: John Rait http://pentimento.ca 416 406-6772

SALON

at

Pentimento

Over the last few months a small team of 3, Brigitte Gall, TV host, comedienne and City Councillor of Minden Ontario, Victoria Ward, Artist and playwright and blogger and myself have quietly been working towards a new series of evenings here at Pentimento in the tradition of the salons that took place in Europe during the late 1800's.  These evenings are meant as a means to bring together Art, Music, Science and Politics in the same room and to see what happens when worlds collide.  In our trial evenings so far we have had guests like John Nash, a genome physicist with Health Canada, Graeme Lottering who gave us an amazing talk on the history of pigment, celtic fiddler Lennan Delaney who recently travelled Europe with Frank McCourt and his brother and Artist/Actress Kirsten Johnson who through humor and pathos gave us her view of the world now and in the future.

Colette Stevenson

In our final trial evening we were very lucky to have as special guests Colette Stevenson, Coronation Street actress, Al Rowe a young musical sensation and an amazing interview by Thom Ernst, Host of TVO's Saturday Night at the Movies and film critic and author Richard Crouse about Richard's latest book

Al Rowe

RAISING HELL: KEN RUSSELL AND THE UNMAKING OF THE DEVILS.

What made the evening even more fun was that unbeknownst to Richard Crouse a very dear friend of mine Meg Walter was in the audience.  Meg played Sister Meg in the Ken Russell film The Devils.  At the end of their conversation we brought Meg to the stage and introduced them all. Suffice it to say that Richard's mind was blown.

Pentimento Gallery would like to offer our sincere thanks for everyone who has participated in the lead up to the launch of these nights in 2013!  Our special thanks to both Thom Ernst and Richard Crouse for a fascinating and informative discourse on this forgotten but groundbreaking film.

Salon at Pentimento is hosted by the amazing Brigitte Gall and Victoria Ward!

The Salon nights are scheduled once a month and the seating is very limited... 30 people maximum!  Look for announcements here on the Blog!

Troy Brooks at Gallerie D'Avignon in Montreal

Troy Brooks at Gallerie D'Avignon in Montreal

The rest of Canada is starting to catch on to the works of Troy Brooks. For the first time the work of this amazingly talented artist are for sale in Montreal at the beautiful Gallerie D'Avignon.  If you find yourself in this corner of the country please stop by and have a look!

THE FATES AND THE FURIES

WORKS BY TROY BROOKS

PENTIMENTO FINE ART GALLERY

 is very pleased to announce that  50% of the works were sold on opening night.  Don't miss your chance to see these amazing works before November 25th!  The Fates and the Furies is the fourth series from artist Troy Brooks.  His paintings of surreal female characters have sparked a flurry of interest with Toronto art collectors.  The complex women in his paintings weave haunted tales that escape merely one interpretation. "This show is my most diverse group of characters," says the artist.  "The theme and the one thing that ties these women together is a sense of being divided.  They are all experiencing a self-segregation."  The Globe and Mail has called Troy's work "alluring, alarming" and "a shimmering cast of characters."  The buzz is starting to grow around this exciting new emerging artist!

Feast for the Prince

New works by Gary Blundell

Gary Blundell graduated from the University of Waterloo in 1983, with an Honours B.Sc. in Earth Sciences.  His fascination with the natural world reaches back into childhood.  From a very young age he noticed and studied the world around him, the soil and stone beneath his feet and the sky above.  He pondered passage of time, the elements and their relentless effect on the surface of our world.  He pondered the patterns that these forces created, and continually altered.  He also pondered the human presence within this natural realm, the intrusive hand of man, altering and scarring the surface of this planet, and the unending battle for natural order to reclaim and rebuild from season to season.

The creative process for these pieces began with a router.  With both conscious control and the occasional "accidents", the artist's hands wielded the power tool to create recessions, patterns within the wood.  Gary acknowledges the pivotal impact of late Canadian artist Peterson Ewen, in introducing him to this approach.  There is a palpable physicality in these large wooden paintings  The rigorous act of gouging into the wood is evident, retained in each piece.  Gary then applies acrylic plasters, in varying thickness, to specific areas on the wood; a partial rebuilding of the surface.  A tearing away is followed by a building up.  Overlays of oil paint are then applied, exuding rich and vibrant colour, pulled from the varied pallette of the earth itself.

In FEAST FOR THE PRINCE the artist expands his work to include works based on the hanging and curing of meat.  "I have begun to see the surface of the earth as a kind of flesh, something that reminds me of my own body; the tearing away of rock and soil by wind and water as equivalent to my own aging and deterioration." (Artist Statement, 2012).

Seven paintings reveal this process, depicting hanging portions of locally farmed or caught Moose, Deer and cattle.  The exposed inner layers of flesh in works such as Husk and display are clinically visceral; this was the stuff of a living thing, blood once coursed through that tissue.  Two or three flattened areas of pure colour provide a simplified yet charged backdrop for the animal segments, causing them to leap forward into the viewer's eye and mind.  The artist confirms an homage to the past with this series, drawing inspiration from Rembrandt's Carcass of Beef or Flayed OX of 1655, and the Beef Carcas paintings of the early 20th century by Chaim Soutine.

FEAST FOR THE PRINCE opens on October 4th and runs to October 28th.  The vernissage is Thursday October 4th from 6 - 9 pm. 

NOTORIOUS

WORKS BY WIL SIMPSON

Wil Simpson's work has refreshed iconic imagery and brought it into a modern context that appeals to both young and old alike.  His exploration of imagery using a series of 8 small green army men from his childhood planted his earlier works in a series of decades epitomized by War and it's aftermath. His latest body of work NOTORIOUS introduces the bevy of beauties who scandalized society with their progressive roles in what was to become the feminist movement.

Through a series of 15 portraits Wil Simpson introduces the women who began it all to a new generation.

NOTORIOUS runs from August 30 - September 30, 2012.  The opening reception is September 6 from 6-9 pm.