Form. Feature. Gesture.

Oeno Gallery hosts a multi-format exhibit

Since its inception in 2004, Carlyn Moulton and the Oeno gallery have continued to bring the work of world class artists through its doors. Moulton is the owner/curator and her goal for the gallery has always been to seek out, represent and exhibit exceptional works of contemporary art. The majority of the works brought to the gallery are from established Canadian artists who have received acclaim both here and abroad for their talents. Oeno Gallery is a member of the Art Dealers Association of Canada and in 2014, also started assisting private individuals looking to sell or buy historic or significant pieces of Canadian art. Names like Tom Thomson, Lawren Harris, Emily Carr and JEH MacDonald have all had work featured in the gallery’s annual Secondary Market Exhibition. Scultpure is also a very important artform for the gallery, and in 2011, the Oeno Gallery Sculpture garden was born at Huff Estates. The sprawling four-acre garden includes sculptures and installations from around the world that play with colour, materials, and complements the natural flora and fauna being highlighted by the gallery’s skilled gardeners.

This year, the Gallery’s annual holiday exhibit is called Form. Feature. Gesture. It features seven artists in two spaces of the gallery whose mediums range from paint to glass to bronze. John Paul Robinson is an artist from Toronto who works with glass. Robinson is the recipient of the Joan Chalmers Glass Award and has won Best Glass Award twice at the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition. His works can be seen in The Canadian Museum of History, The Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, The Museum of American Glass and the Musée des Beaux-Arts. He has two large wall sculptures in the exhibit. The Amber and Red glass pieces are a series of intersecting arcs that look similar to rolling waves. The sculptures are suspended from three points and the different colours of glass make for warm shadows and textures from the light filtering through. In these pieces, Robinson is looking at the complex nature of light as both a particle and a wave.

The names of his sculptures are very scientific. Probability R and Probability A2 are names that stem from physics, where the wave nature of light is called a “probability wave” representing the probability of an observer measuring a particle at a given time or place. Robinson’s sculptures are fluid and give the appearance of movement, even when stationary on the wall.

Peter Hoffer is a painter from Brantford, Ontario who has exhibited internationally at art fairs in Toronto, New York, Stockholm, London, Milan, Amsterdam and Hong Kong. His paintings can be seen in pubic collections at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, The Musée de Québec and the Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery. His paintings are dark and haunting, depicting images of people and animals that look like they been caught in a paparazzi camera flash. Dark and brooding backgrounds with bright, ghostly figures at the forefront. Hoffer often scarifies his paintings, then finishes them with layers of resin similar to what artists did to their work in the Parisian salons of the 18th and 19th century. Hoffer’s paintings are large in scale, which also helps to set the tone and style of what he’s going for, which hearkens back to the classical, romantic forms and periods.

For Moulton, it was about finding different approaches to capturing the themes of form, figure and gesture and bringing them together in a cohesive way. The exhibit is bright at times, and creepy at others. Many play with light and light refraction, while others rely on their form as their primary focus.

Next up for Oeno Gallery is a fun event in February to wake people out of the winter doldrums. Colour Break is an annual exhibition of bold and colourful work meant to chase away the winter blues. This year features Carol Furhman, a sculptor who creates ultra realistic human sculptures of women bathers in bright summer colours.

“We always look for people that are really vivid with their approach to colour. It’s a little vacation to the south for those that aren’t travelling away,” says Moulton.

The Figure. Form. Gesture. exhibit at Oeno Gallery runs until January 27.