exhibition

Newzones is pleased to announce the group show, G'ddy Up!, opening July 10th, and running concurrently with the Calgary Stampede. All are invited to join us for a Stampede Breakfast – Newzones style – which kicks off at 11 am.

The cowboy no longer solely represents machismo, but for some represents nostalgic yearnings for a simpler time. The Calgary Stampede allows us to kick off our shoes, and join in on all the magical things that it has to offer.

Calgary comes alive with cowboy culture during the Stampede, so there is no denying that July is the month of the cowboy. G'ddy Up! will explore the subject of the contemporary Wild West through means of painting and photography.

Included in Newzones' G'ddy Up! is a selection of artists who demonstrate an interest in both the complex idea of the cowboy culture, as well as those who use aspects of this culture for formal explorations.

Artists included: Joe Andoe, Aron Hill, Joshua Jensen-Nagle, David Robinson and Kevin Sonmor.

Newzones is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new work by Angela Grossmann.

Part of the vibrant next generation of Saskatchewan's abstract painters, Jonathan Forrest's boldly coloured acrylic paintings playfully reference post-war abstract painting. But instead of introspectively exploring the canvas, Forrest's layered works lift from the surface, tactfully invading the viewers' space.

Roald Nasgaard in Abstract Painting in Canada writes of Forrest, "He is the youngest and perhaps the last direct descendant of the tradition that began with Greenberg, passed down to him through Perehudoff and Christie, the tradition that so long retained its faith in painting qua painting independent of external
references."

Forrest indicates that a large part of his exploration as an artist is his love for layering colours atop colours, to create various plains which he carefully delineates by taping off certain areas as he paints. The artist says this allows him to create different illusionary spaces that can be played off one another.

Born in 1962, Edinburgh, Scotland, Jonathan Forrest received both his Bachelors and Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Saskatchewan. He also attended the Emma Lake Artist's Workshop and became an organizer in 2001. His work had been widely exhibited within Canada and can be found in many public collections including: the Canada Council's Art Bank, University of Saskatchewan and the Art Gallery of Alberta.

Newzones is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new work by Joshua Jensen-Nagle.

Joshua Jensen-Nagle moved to Canada a decade ago and has never felt as much national pride as he does now. Coming from New Jersey, he appreciates his American roots but feels like he has discovered something 'special' up here. "New Canadiana" is a cultivation of Jensen-Nagle's life and experience migrating and living north or the border. After exploring the country from the east coast to the west, Jensen-Nagle is completely comfortable calling himself a Canadian.

"New Canadiana" is the artists' personal view on Canada. It's not about promoting maple leafs or hockey sticks, but a contemporary view - one that is ushered in by a new era of immigrants. The work is not quintessential Canadian culture but is merely the perspective of an artist who has crossed the imaginary line and loves being on the other side.

Originally from New Jersey, Joshua Jensen-Nagle moved to Toronto to pursue his artistic education at Ryerson Polytechnic Institute in 1999. Since graduating in 2003, Jensen-Nagle has experimented with image formats, production techniques and materials. Jensen-Nagle has, in the past, used toy cameras, pinhole cameras, and expired Polaroid film. His work has been collected world wide and has exhibited in both Canada and the USA.

As part of Exposure 2010: Calgary's Festival of Photography, Newzones to pleased to present 'Perception', a group exhibition of Newzones' photo based-artists.

Featuring Dianne Bos, Franco DeFrancesca, John Folsom, James Holroyd, Virginia Mak, Joshua Jensen-Nagle and Sarah Nind, 'Perception' will explore contemporary ideas of space and how it relates to photography. The photograph, after all, is the most common mediator of our memories of certain places. Snapshots, postcards, and home movies have all been used to record locations and the nostalgia that comes along with them.

When it comes to the photograph, however, none of the artists in Place are conventional straight shooters. Instead,photography is mixed with wax or paint and, in some cases, Plexiglas. Some use pinhole cameras, while others explore the potential of the Polaroid. Together the artists in Perception present an intriguing dialogue with the conventional understanding of space as mediated through the photographic medium.

Featuring: Dianne Bos, Franco DeFrancesca, John Folsom, James Holroyd, Virginia Mak, Joshua Jensen-Nagle and Sarah Nind.

Newzones is pleased to announce an exciting new solo exhibition by Dianne Bos, titled, 'Wonder Rooms'

If you are a follower of pinhole photography, chances are that you are aware of photographer Dianne Bos. Not only has Bos received national and international acclaim for her innovative work, she is also one of the featured artists in Eric Renner's seminal textbook: Pinhole Photography: Rediscovering A Historic Technique.

Bos's upcoming exhibition will debut her new body of work which will include new colour images from Italy and France, as well as her 'book camera' series and a selection of light boxes. While printed photographs are the end product of the photo process, Bos is also interested in the
devices that create images. Her ongoing 'book camera' series shows the direct connection between the camera and the image. In this case, the pinhole device is a book that Bos converted into a camera. Bos states, 'the images taken with the book not only visually reflect the content but often collect the actual text of the book.'

Also to be included in 'Wonder Rooms' is a selection of light collecting boxes which Bos has turned into light boxes themselves - mimicking in miniature the illuminated spaces which were their original sources.

Bos has received her B.F.A. from Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick and currently divides her time between the foothills of the Rockies and the Pyrenees, France. Recently, Bos's work has been included in important international exhibitions in Aleppo, Syria and Siena, Italy as well as a solo exhibitions at the Kamloops Art Gallery and the University of Waterloo Art Gallery. Her work was included in the 2005 Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art and currently is touring nationally in two exhibitions, 'Time and Space', from the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery and 'Dark Matter: The Great War and Fading Memory', from the Confederation Centre for the Arts, Charlottetown, PEI. Bos has been collected by the Glenbow Museum (Calgary), the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Whyte Museum (Banff), and the Canada Council Art Bank (Ottawa).

Newzones is pleased to present a new solo exhibition by Calgary based Aron Hill.

Aron Hill's new body of work strives to present timeless situations through both personal experience and by looking at early Modernist compositions. These paintings seek to acknowledge and exploit the context of the subject matter, all the while inviting the viewer to find their own meaning within.

While Hill is continually exploring different subject matter, his work is consistently commenting on the relationship we as humans have with nature. Hill's compositions often pair man – made objects with elements of nature, allowing the viewer to assess the relationship for themselves.

Hill's paintings urge viewers to not only take a critical standpoint with the subject matter, but to take a step back and recognize the playful manner in which they are composed. Hill likens his painting process to a strategy one might see in sports teams, in that specific steps are taken from conception to production for each painting. Hill looks for specific compositional elements as well as 'timeless qualities' which provide him with the tools to take an image from concept to canvas.

Hill graduated from Goldsmiths College in London, England in 2007, with a Master of Fine Arts in painting. In 2000, he graduated from Alberta College of Art and Design with a BFA in Painting and Sculpture.

Newzones is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new works by sculptor David Robinson.

David Robinson's sculptures can be both intimate and monumental, demonstrating a great command of media and skill as a figurative artist. His sculptures are juxtapositions of urban architectural settings and the human form encapsulating a modernistic approach to a very classical domain in art -- that of the human nude.

On his work, Robinson states: "In a deep enough sleep, the body can breathe under water or fly through the air. These sculptures are the working outcomes of waking dreams, born under the same sign as their nocturnal counterparts. That is, the same quickening of the mind that gives rise to a briefly sustained but absolute belief in some as yet untapped potential."

Featuring a new body of work, Robinson's latest exhibition will reflect humankind's presence in the city, a place where our existence is so often incidental to the larger visions that fuel its artifice. These works are meant to project a sense of place, connected not only by the bricks and mortar of urban infrastructure, but by the infrastructure of a human community without which a city is no place at all.

Born in Toronto, Ontario in 1964, David Robinson received his Bachelors of Fine Arts in Sculpture from Ontario College of Art in 1987. Since then, David Robinson has exhibited in many solo and group exhibitions.

Newzones is pleased to debut a solo exhibition of new paintings by Joe Fleming.

'Remain Calm' will showcase irregular shaped surfaces with a selection of the work being multi-dimensional. Divided into two distinct groups, this work reflects Fleming's investigations into his childhod dreams of being a rockstar and travelling the world, while he other grouping reflects a more personal and dramatic element in the artist's life.

Using two distinctive disciplines, Joe Fleming's paintings exist in a comfortable equilibrium between storytelling and mark making. Pulling from art history, pop culture, and his personal experiences, Fleming creates works that verge on the diaristic. Interested in the environment created by juxtapositioning flat imagery with expressionistic and textural paint application, Fleming enjoys breaking down his imagery to dot-patterns before painting them onto abstract grounds.

Fleming works with a variety of materials including wood panel and plexiglas. He states, 'I enjoy a surface I can alter before and during the painting process - I gouge, cut and grind into the materials as if I'm drawing with a giant pencil'. Fleming uses power tools and spray enamels alongside his brushes and acrylics in order to evoke the frenetic nature of his urban existance.

Fleming exhibits internationally and has been reviewed in publications like the Canadian Art Magazine, Globe & Mail, and Azure. His work has been collected by the Art Gallery of Alberta, the Canadian High Commission, and the Canadian Postal Museum in Ottawa. Other collections include: Corporate Trimark Mutual Funds, Scotia Bank, General Electric, AT&T, Magna International, Pricewaterhouse Coopers (Malaysia), HSBC Bank (Malaysia), and the Australian High Commission.

Newzones is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Jeff Nachtigall.

Saskatchewan-based artist Nachtigall's new paintings highlight his quintessential Canadian wit while drawing from his own life on the prairies, Canadian history and contemporary pop culture. This new body, in fact, is a tribute to the historically infamous Battle of the Plains of Abraham which is celebrating its 250th anniversary on September 13th.

In 1753, Voltaire famously referred to Canada as "...a country covered with snow and ice eight months of the year, inhabited by barbarians,bears and beavers." Voltaire's poison pen also highlights the degree to which the perception of Canada has been crafted by collective imagination.

Nachtigall uses this pivotal battle as the jumping off point for his latest painting series. The quasi-historical battles play out on landscapes that reference the history of Canadian landscape painting as much as the specific geography of Quebec. Running rough shod over any canonical account of the events, Nachtigall takes on the past in much the same ways that teenage boys develop elaborate war games on paper, inventing the battle theatre and rules of engagement through the process of drawing itself.

Born in 1970, Yorkton, Saskatchewan, Jeff Nachtigall received his Bachelors of Fine Arts from the University of Regina, Saskatchewan in 1993, and completed one year of his master's degree in printmaking at Illinois State University. He has exhibited widely across Canada and his artwork can be found in many public collections.

Newzones is pleased to present the debut exhibition of new painting by young, up-and-coming Calgary-based artist Samantha Walrod.

In Current Projects Journal, K. Adrian Yip writes that: "Samantha Warold's drawings have their place somewhere between a garden and the diary of a young girl." As a continuing series, Walrod's new collage paintings act as a diary recalling personal relationships and moments of self-discovery. Floral motifs grow out of a C-train pole or a pair of antlers, before receding back into the paint blobs or ink splashes. In her painting process, synthetic filters (pixels and bright unnatural colors) depict memories of childhood, recall friendships and record activities of simple daily living such as taking Calgary Transit.

Walrod's collage paintings narrate the experience of remembering. Their images and colors come from experiences and mediated encounters withtechnologies such as computers, television, and mass-produced objects. Memories of intimate relationships shift and return drawn and collaged as animal or plant forms. These layers of paint are symbolic of the mind's ability to retain detailed information of an event while at the same time leaving some areas/memories muted or cloudy.

Despite her aversion to the computer surface, Walrod uses computer technology in the creation of her work. Colors are manipulated with Photoshop and printed images are collaged under and over paint. The work participates with both hand and machine combining memory and symbol in delicate layers of lush colour and imagery.

Walrod is a recent graduate with distinction from the Alberta College of Art and Design.

July is a month of spectacular going-ons here in Calgary - all of which, of course, begins with the Calgary Stampede. Pegged the 'Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth', the Stampede always brings in the summer with a bang!

Not to be outdone, Newzones is hosting The Big Picture Show which will run concurrently with the Calgary Stampede. Picking up on the Stampede's love for the dramatic and the grandiose, The Big Picture Show will feature monumentally scaled paintings by some of Canada's and the USA's top artists. Showcasing the potential for the painting medium, the works in this show highlight just how phenomenal painting can be on a large scale. Muscular, breathtaking, visually complex – this only begins to sum up the work that will be shown in The Big Picture Show.

From Joe Fleming's dramatic pop culture canvases to William Perehudoff's iconic 80's triangle paintings, all of the work in The Big Picture Show exemplifies the potential of the painted surface.

Artists included: Bill Fisher, Joe Fleming, Jonathan Forrest, Yechel Gagnon, Angela Grossmann, William Perehudoff and Don Pollack.

Please join us Saturday for a stampede breakfast Newzones-style: 11:00 am onwards

Running concurrently with the Calgary Stampede, G'ddy Up! explores the visual side of Calgary's cowboy culture. While once regulated to the movie world, the subject of the cowboy and cowboy kitsch has become a growing presence in the contemporary art scene. The contemporary cowboy no longer only represents machismo and Wild West but is indicative of a society filled with nostalgic yearnings for a simpler time where the heroes and the villains were easily distinguished by the colour of their hat.

There's no denying that July is the month of the cowboy and all of the magical things that come along with the Calgary Stampede.

Included in Newzones' G'ddy Up! is a selection of artists interested in both the complex idea of the cowboy culture as well as those who use aspects of this culture for formal explorations. From the horses found in Kevin Sonmor and Joe Andoe's work to Dianne Bos's signature photographs of our own Stampede rides, all of the work in G'ddy Up! pays homage to the cowboy culture that accompanies the Calgary Stampede.

Artists included: Joe Andoe, Dianne Bos, Cathy Daley, Kevin Sonmor.

Please join us for a stampede breakfast Newzones-style: 11:00 am onwards

Newzones is pleased to present a debut solo exhibition of new paintings by Joseph Siddiqi.

The landscape has served as a central theme in Joseph Siddiqi's work for the past ten years. It is a subject from which he has moved away from at times only to reapproach it from a different point of view. Siddiqi, in fact, is inspired by the urban landscape that surrounds him. While his paintings do take some from his somewhat grittier neighbourhood in Montreal, he is as influenced by historic Romantic painters such as Constable and Turner. For Siddiqi, landscape is a pictorial problem, a way to explore how form follows function and how architecture has both a noble quality and an ideal form.

Siddiqi's painting process is intuitive and his series explore a narrative process. While the narrative might not always seem completely obvious, Siddiqi layers his paintings with pictorial clues that allow the viewer an entrance into the work. An up-and-coming painter, his work shows an astute sensibility for color combined with a sensuous depiction of symbolic form.

From abstracted images of the inner city to futuristic renderings of places to come, Siddiqi offers viewers an insightful look at our often tenuous relationship with our surroundings.

Joseph Siddiqi was born in 1972 in Montreal. He attended l'École Nationale des beaux-arts de Bourges in France, completed a BFA in Studio Art at Concordia University (1999) and graduated with the Dean's Scholar Award from Boston University's MFA Painting Program (2004). He has received grants from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. His work is in the collection of the Canada Council for the Arts.

John Folsom
Souvenirs

SEPTEMBER 13 - OCTOBER 18, 2008
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 20 from 1:00 to 4:00 pm

Gallery hours: Tuesday - Saturday 10:30am - 5:30pm

Newzones is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new photo-based works by John Folsom.

Drawing on the idea of a memento or a travel keepsake, Folsom will present landscape-referent works inspired by ephemera associated with place. Images from Banff and other points in the Pacific Northwest will be altered, scanned, de-saturated, then further enhanced with other media. The goal of Folsom's artistic practice is to create an idealized notion of images lost to time.

Using Polaroids and hand-colored postcards as the main source of inspiration, Folsom will construct the rural idyll, a countryside based part on reality and partly on romance and nostalgia.

Folsom attended the Banff International Arts Residency in 2007.

He will be in attendance at the opening on Saturday, September 20th.

John Folsom graduated from the Southern Illinois University, Carbondale IL. with a Bachelor of Arts, Cinema and Photography. Folsom has exhibited extensively throughout North America and his work can be found in collections all over the world. These collections include: Christoph Merian Foundation, Basel Switzerland, Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN, Tennessee State Museum, Nashville, TN, and the Fulton County Arts Council, Atlanta, Georgia.

Q: How do you get a bunch of Canadians to leave a room?
A: You say: "Please leave the room."

We're polite, we're liberal, we're the nation up north with the big land mass but very few people. These are the concepts that often determine how the rest of the world perceives us. Ask any Canadian, however, about how we view ourselves and they would say that... in a nutshell… most Canadians are pretty darn funny. Hilarious, in fact. We're a precocious, self-deprecating nation amused by the idea that the world thinks that we're so unflinchingly pleasant.

So what does it truly mean to be Canadian? This will be the question explored by the artists in Wayne Gretzky Rocks! From deer heads to cowboys to the great Canadian landscape, this exhibition will explore of complex idea of Canadian-ness.

Included artists: Dianne Bos, Joe Fleming, Yechel Gagnon, Jeff Nachtigall, Joshua Jensen-Nagle, Colleen Philippi, David Robinson, Samantha Walrod

Please join us on Saturday July 5th for a stampede breakfast Newzones-style:
11:00 am onwards

Newzones Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new mixed media works by Angela Grossmann.

Writer S Fuller says this about Grossmann's work: 'For almost 25 years Angela Grossmann has worked to show us life at the margins. Now without taking her eye from the grim reality that for many life is experienced as an outsider, in this body of work she shows us, too, one of the ways in which those who feel marginalized by society cope.

Grossmann entitles this new work Make Believe.

The images immediately tug the viewer in. We have all escaped to that place of make believe, which can so often seem to make up for what is denied us in the real world. For some it is a place they have been able to leave behind with childhood, but for many it may be the only neighbourhood that offers comfort from the harsh reality of their everyday lives.

Grossmann, may know how tempting it may be to live one's life in Make Believe, but she also knows as an observer of life and as someone who has worked long and hard for the recognition she now has as an artist, that there is always grittiness and difficulties in life.

This she is reminded of each day when she goes to her studio in Gastown, Vancouver's oldest site, and one that neighbours on the Vancouver Downtown Eastside, the poorest neighbourhood in Canada.'

While still a student in 1985, Grossmann was introduced as one of the Vancouver Art Gallery's "Young Romantic" painters most likely to influence the course of painting in that decade. The "Young Romantics" also known as the "Vancouver Five" took the Canadian art world by storm in the mid 80s.Grossmann continues to be one of Canada's premiere painters with numerous exhibitions and artist grants to her name and was recently declared by the Art Newspaper as "one of the most influential artists in the UK."

Newzones is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of Jordan Broadworth's new work.

As part of the New Abstraction movement in Canada, Broadworth pays homage to painting's glorious past.Creating sumptuous, seductive abstract paintings, Broadworth seamlessly melds gestural lines and squeegee drips to create work that seems as much about the physicality of a painting as the act of painting itself.

Art critic Gary Michael Dault of The Globe and Mail says this about Broadworth: "Toronto-based painter Jordan Broadworth makes exquisite paintings that hover between being rather lofty embodiments of their own sophisticated, procedural agendas, and providing a kind of lush, down-home hedonism."

Broadworth's traveling solo exhibition, Turn, recently toured public galleries in Western Canada and has gained recent attention for his inclusion in Roald Nasgaard's new seminal art history book: Abstract Painting in Canada.

Born in 1968, Esquesing, Ontario, Broadworth received his Bachelors of Fine Art from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1992 and his Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Guelph in 1997. Broadworth exhibition history includes group and solo projects through out North America. Broadworth was also one of the finalists for the RCB Canadian Painting Competition in 2002. He has received several arts council grants and is represented in the collections of numerous Canadian institutions such as the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Macdonald Stewart Art Centre and Art Gallery of Mississauga.

Paintings opens on May 10 and will run through June 28

Newzones is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new works by Yechel Gagnon. This is Gagnon's Western Canadian debut.

For Yechel Gagnon, plywood contains an enormous potential as an artistic medium. Fascinated by the composite nature of the material, she believes it holds many possibilities, many secrets in its multiple layers. Similar to a sculptor who chooses a specific block of marble to carve, Gagnon is guided by the make-up of each piece of plywood. Using routers, sanders, chisel knives and grinders, she strives to unravel the existing information within the wood.

Gary Michael Dault writes this is The Globe and Mail: "What, in the end, gives Yechel Gagnon's works its power is her respect – indeed her veneration – for her material."

Gagnon likens the marks she cuts into the wood to the ones made with a brush. Each work is a meditative reflection that often suggests landscapes, oneiric spaces or topographical maps. Within these different realms, the image making flows from occidental tradition to Chinese landscape painting. Some elements are more literal than others but the final perception is always different for each viewer depending on their own predisposition. Similar to the layering of the plywood, the final product contains different levels of interpretation and the utilitarian material disappears in favor of a work of art.

Yechel Gagnon completed a Master of Fine Arts in Studio Arts from Concordia University after receiving an AOCAD with Honours in Drawing and Painting from the Ontario College of Art and Design.She exhibits her work in commercial galleries, artist run centres and museums across Canada and already has two major publications to her name. Her work has received reviews in the Globe & Mail, Canadian Art, Vie des Arts, Espace magazine and Circa International magazine.Gagnon has also received grants from both the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. Gagnon's work is widely collected and is part of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Osler Hoskins &Harcourt collection, Le Centre-d'art de Baie-St-Paul and in other high profile corporate and private collections.

As Canada's most senior living abstract painter, William Perehudoff has been painting for seven decades.

Born in Langham Saskatchewan in 1919. Through his artwork, Perehudoff has carried on a dialogue with both American colour field painting and the European abstract tradition. He has, it can be said, done so in a more sustained way than have any of his western compatriots.

William Perehudoff's sensibilities towards painting are described in the following quote from Nancy Tousley, guest curator of Bill's exhibition at the Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, SK in 1993:

"Since those early Emma Lake workshops, Perehudoff has continued to see painting as a space in which a dialogue among forms gives rise to feeling. He begins a painting with one form and adds another and another, building towards a unified whole. But whether he has ever completely given up form-as-metaphor for pure formalism is a moot point. He has taken what he can use from what he has learned, sometimes contrary to the sources, and made his own synthesis as artists do."

Throughout the 50's and 60's, Bill was an active participant in the Emma Lake Artists' Workshops and participated in workshops attended by Will Barnet (1957), Herman Cherry (1961), Clement Greenberg (1962), Kenneth Noland (1983), and Donald Judd (1968). In 1988, he was a workshop leader at Emma Lake. Bill Perehudoff received the Order of Canada, recognizing his outstanding artistic achievements and for his ongoing contributions to Canadian art.

60's - 90's will feature four decades of work and will run from March 8 - April 5

Newzones is very excited to announce a solo exhibition by Peter Hoffer, one of Canada's notable landscape painters.

Peter Hoffer's approach to landscape painting is romantic yet subverts our understanding of traditional landscape painting. Using oil on wood panel, canvas or a combination of both, the surfaces of his paintings are rough and torn, depicting scenes that are both constructed and deconstructed simultaneously.

The paintings in Hoffer's new series invite the viewer to take part in the construction of both the landscape depicted and our understanding of the painting medium. Washes of paint, thick layer of resin, and exposed wood panel create a duality of surfaces that plays on ideas of tranquility vs. chaos and the wild vs. the pristine.

Peter Hoffer has a Masters of Fine Arts degree from Concordia University in Montréal, Québec. Hoffer's paintings can be found in several prominent public, private, and corporate collections.

Peter Hoffer's Collection of Short Stories will run from March 8 - April 5, 2008.

If you are a follower of pinhole photography, chances are that you are aware of photographer Dianne Bos. Not only has Bos received national and international acclaim for her innovative work, she is also one of the featured artists in Eric Renner's seminal textbook: Pinhole Photography: Rediscovering An Historic Technique.

This February, during Exposure 2008: Calgary's month long photography festival, Newzones is pleased to present a selection from 8 years of Bos's most recognized photographs. Souvenir de Voyage will include photos from Bos's many travels abroad and in Canada as well as from her home in the Pyrenees, France. Also included in the exhibition will be brand new, unseen work from 2007.

Of her work Bos states: "My work challenges the view of photography as a way to 'capture an instant in time.' Viewers have said that my pinholes evokes the memory-image that remains for them long after they have viewed a familiar location. I think this recognizes the importance I have always assigned to time, memory, and capturing the essence of the place, in my images of architectural icons and classic travelers destinations."

Souvenir de Voyage will run from February 2 - March 1, 2008 and is part of the Exposure 2008 Photography Festival.

Bos has received her B.F.A. from Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick and currently divides her time between the foothills of the Rockies and the Pyrenees, France.

Recently, Bos's work has been included in important international exhibitions in Aleppo, Syria and Siena, Italy as well as a solo exhibitions at the Kamloops Art Gallery and the University of Waterloo Art Gallery. Her work was included in the 2005 Alberta Biennial of Contempary Art and currently is touring nationally in two exhibitions, 'Time and Space', from the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery and 'Dark Matter: The Great War and Fading Memory', from the Confederation Centre for the Arts, Charlottetown, PEI.

Newzones is pleased to present Sarah Nind's current exhibition Mnemonic Traces. With these new photo-based works, Nind explores the environment through ambiguous viewpoints (the actual vs. the imagined city; the romantic vs. the distressed landscape) and the idea that the architectural grid can be an extension of the patterns of nature.

Part of Nind's questionings focus on whether or not individuals can be distinguished from the environment they inhabit, inseparable from the boundary of the city or nature. On an emotional level, Mnemonic Traces addresses the fragility of the desire for place, the longing for home, and the search for lost identity.

Formally, Mnemonic Traces employs mixed-media processes based on photographic documentation mediated by painted intervention and digital technologies. The resulting images exhibit characteristics of photography as an emotive and poetic medium. At the same time, imagery is transformed through the integration of paint. This painted surface, with its ability to transcend the literal description, is addressed as a dimension to express and record emotional states and subjective realities.

Mnemonic Traces will run from February 2 - March 1, 2008 and is part of the Exposure 2008 Photography Festival.

Sarah Nind attended the Ecole des beaux-arts, Paris in 1979. In 1994, she completed a Master's degree in Fine Arts from York University and has exhibited extensively throughout Canada and the United States. Most recently, she exhibited in The Painted Photograph at The Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa, ON. Along with this prestigious exhibition, she has had other exhibitions in public galleries like the Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery, Owen Sound, ON and the Art Gallery of University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON.

Upon first glance at a Don Pollack's painting, you might just mistake it for a photograph. By referencing documentary daguerreotypes, Pollack uses references to technology to question man's environmental urbanization. In these highly realistic landscapes there is a twist, an element of uncertainty populating his classical representations of nature.

Within Pollack's highly glossed paintings are representations of nature as a force that cannot be contained or defined by human constructs. In his work, nature always manages to insinuate an element of the untamable and the unexpected into human attempts to impose meaning and order upon it. Pollack is concerned with the validity of painting in a modern world of digital simulations. His new series of paintings cleverly combines his realist, romantic style with conceptualist undertones that more often permeate this post-modern society.

Born in 1958, in Chicago, Illinois, Don Pollack received his Bachelors of Fine Arts from the University of Illinois and his Masters of Fine Arts from Ohio State University. His work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout North America. Since 1986, Don Pollack has been teaching art at the Illinois Institute of Art in Chicago, Illinois.

Cybèle Young creates intricate and intriguing objects fashioned from paper. She twists and turns paper strips to create tiny sculpted objects. In scenes that are often only a few inches high, Young creates quirky, often tongue-in-cheek narratives that engage each viewer in a different way.

Young's fascination with textile points to her interest in how their creation denotes social structure. Through her labour-intensive activity, her works ultimately reveal both the hand of the artist as well as our own view of the world around us. Each tiny construction is like a witty inside joke that you can extrapolate from, creating clever narratives of your own.

Cybèle Young attended the Ontario College of Art, where she majored in sculpture and printmaking. Her work has been displayed in numerous exhibitions, including the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition and the Biennale Internationale d'Art Miniature in Quebec. She has won various awards, including the Sculpture/Installation Faculty Award at the Ontario College of Art, the Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild Japanese Paper Place Award and the Ernst & Young Best Original Print Award at the 1999 Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition.

David Robinson's sculptures can be both intimate and monumental, demonstrating a great command of media and skill as a figurative artist. His sculptures are juxtapositions of urban architectural settings and the human form encapsulating a modernistic approach to a very classical domain in art -- that of the male nude.

Featuring a new body of work, Robinson's latest exhibition reflect humankind's presence in the city, a place where our existence is so often incidental to the larger visions that fuel its artifice. These works are meant to project a sense of place, connected not only by the bricks and mortar of urban infrastructure, but by the infrastructure of a human community without which a city is no place at all.

Born in Toronto, Ontario in 1964, David Robinson received his Bachelors of Fine Arts in Sculpture from Ontario College of Art in 1987. Since then, David Robinson has exhibited in many solo and group exhibitions throughout North America. His work can be found in many public and private collections across Canada.

Launching our 2007 fall exhibition season, Newzones is proud to present fuzz - a group exhibition of five of Canada's leading female abstract painters. Exploring the world of contemporary abstraction, fuzz offers an alternate, girly glimpse into current painting practices.

As part of our exploration, fuzz will showcase painters at different points in their careers. Recently nominated for the prestigious RBC Canadian Painting Competition, a forum celebrating up-and-coming visual artists, Rdest's paintings are fresh and funky and encapsulate the spirit of the New Canadian Abstraction movement. Also an emerging painter, Goldman's paintings are raw and thick and demonstrate pure painting from an intuitive mind.

Also included in fuzz are mid-career artists Kubis and Dionne who created atmospheric environments populated by fuzzy shapes or dive-bombing halos. And rounding out our fab five is Saskatoon-based Marie Lannoo. Well known for her dazzling, glowing colour fields, Lannoo's work are luminescent anchors in painting exhibition accentuated by feminine sensibilities.

Recently back from the LOOP international video art Festival in Barcelona, Spain, Mike Patten will be presenting his debut Western Canadian exhibition at Newzones.

Mike Patten's Mondrian's Garden reflects on the medium of painting itself - its intrinsic limits and the dual possibility it offers to both represent the world we evolve in as realistic and as an abstraction. As others have done before him, Patten uses the tools of painting to discuss painting. He plays with the thin line that separates abstraction from realism.

Mondrian's Garden might first give the impression of an abstract work, due to its minimalist aspect and the obvious references to modernist art and to Barnett Newman in particular, but it embodies the very concrete desire many artists share to reproduce reality.

In his installation, Patten uses green masking tape to mimic paint. The choice of colour he makes is especially meaningful when an analogy with Piet Mondrian's production has been made, as the latter completely avoided the use of green, which he considered to be evocative of nature and landscapes. In the accompanying works from the Ladder series, Patten further questions the notion of reality, as black masking tape is used to render ladder silhouettes onto framed glass, and the shadows thus cast onto the wall.

Originally from Regina, Mike Patten lives and works in Montréal. He holds a BFA in painting and drawing with a minor in art history from the University of Regina. Patten has participated in solo and group exhibitions internationally and nationally at artist run, commercial, and university galleries including: LOOP international video art Festival, (Barcelona, Spain, 2007), Neutral Ground, (Regina, SK, 2005), Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain, (Montreal, QC, 2006) and the University of Bishops, (Lennoxville, QC, 2006).

Running concurrently with the Calgary Stampede, G'ddy Up! explores the visual side of cowboy pop culture. While once regulated to the movie world, the subject of the cowboy and cowboy kitsch has become a growing presence in the contemporary art scene. The contemporary cowboy no longer only represents machismo and Wild West but is indicative of a society filled with nostalgic yearnings for a simpler time where the heroes and the villains were easily distinguished by the colour of their hat.

Included in Newzones' G'ddy Up! is a selection of artists interested in both the complex idea of the cowboy culture as well as those who use aspects of this culture for formal explorations. From the horses found in Kevin Sonmor and Joshua Jensen-Nagle's work to the playful cowboy figurines in the David Levinthal's 'Wild West' series, all of the work in G'ddy Up! pay homage to the iconic life of the North American cowboy.

Artists include: Cathy Daley, Joshua Jensen-Nagle, David Levinthal, David Robinson, Kevin Sonmor

Newzones is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new abstract paintings by Jonathan Forrest.

Part of the vibrant next generation of Saskatchewan's abstract painters, Jonathan Forrest's boldly coloured acrylic paintings playfully reference post-war abstract painting. But instead of introspectively exploring the canvas, Forrest's layered works lift from the surface, tactfully invading the viewers' space.

In the context of a history of painting defined by flatness, Forrest re-invents the idea of contemporary prairie painting. His multi-layered works play within the limitations of a flat surface while opening up new possibilities for spatial composition.

On these recent paintings, Sky Glabush, writer and fellow painter, states: "Forrest has, recently and finally, allowed colour to occupy center stage. Like compressed and stacked blocks of LEGO, his paintings now pit high-key colours against one another with sure-footed savvy."

Born in 1962, Edinburgh, Scotland, Jonathan Forrest received both his Bachelors and Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Saskatchewan. He also attended the Emma Lake Artist's Workshop and became an organizer in 2001. His work had been widely exhibited within Canada and can be found in many public collections including: the Canada Council's Art Bank, University of Saskatchewan and the Art Gallery of Alberta.

Newzones is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of watercolor paintings by Catherine Perehudoff.

Catherine Perehudoff is a second-generation landscape painter. Landscape is in her blood, so to speak. Daughter of artists Dorothy Knowles and William Perehudoff, Catherine Perehudoff has been capturing, in paint, the beauty of the western landscape for over twenty-five years.

A regular at the famous Emma Lake Workshops (known for inspiring some of Canada's most acknowledged landscape painting), Perehudoff has become a master at capturing the transient beauty of nature. From the grand vista to the personal garden spaces, Perehudoff recreates these spaces with soft clear colours and fluid yet densely applied brush strokes.

Canmore-based art critic Mary-Beth Laviolette says this about Perehudoff's work: "…the effect of this approach to painting that almost seems to breathe of the prairie. Its light, colour, scent and airiness seem but a footstep away." Known for her deft touch, Perehudoff depicts the land's most ephemeral, and most poetic, qualities.

Catherine Perehudoff has an Art History degree from the University of Saskatchewan. She has developed her painting skills under the tutelage of renowned painters such as Kenneth Noland, Reta Cowley and Barbara Ballachey. Since 1979, Perehudoff has exhibited in over 50 solo and group shows and has been published in over 30 articles and magazines. Her work is in major collections including the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Canada Council Art Bank, the Mendel Art Gallery, the Whyte Museum, and the Art Gallery of Alberta. Perehudoff also has the honour of being in the personal collection of "Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth's".

Newzones is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new encasutic paintings by Timothy McDowell.

Inspired by lush botanical imagery of 19th century American still life and landscape painters, Timothy McDowell works in the medium of encaustic to create rich, luminous surfaces covered with images of exotic flora and decorative icons borrowed from a wide range of cultures. This imagery portrays organic forms in an expansive, all-inclusive manner, incorporating the scientific as well as the idyllic associations with nature and our world.

Rooted in the modern visual vocabulary of the Surrealists and Abstract Expressionists, McDowell's paintings make reference to the history of botanical cataloging as well as to the history of artistic journals. In these quiet, often melancholic paintings, McDowell combines a historical and multicultural awareness with a language of beauty that has been lost in time.

McDowell was born in 1953 in Texas and obtained his BFA at the Midwestern State University and his MFA at the University of Arizona. His paintings have been exhibited widely across North America and Europe and can be found in many international collections including: The Bank of America, The William Benton Museum of Art, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. His work has been published in The Art of Encaustic Painting by Joanne Mattera and Flora by Four Contemporary Artists by Ivette Lee.

Newzones is pleased to host a solo exhibition by Cathy Daley.

Collected by the National Gallery of Canada, Cathy Daley's artwork is a leading force in the Canadian art scene. Known for her iconic drawings, Daley's work reflects a savvy aesthetic driven by the contemporary figure yet coloured by post-feminist ideas surrounding the female form.

Drawing from the world of high fashion and our fascination with vintage Hollywood sex symbols, Daley's works made with black oil pastel on white vellum is a contemporary exploration of both body politics and culturally accepted images of femininity. These iconic drawings often point to the formulas behind many stereotypes, which are built on unrealistic ideals of perfection and cultural caricatures propagated by the fashion world.

Of her artwork Roni Feinstein from Art in America writes: "These drawings reflect a contemporary, post-feminist ambivalence toward fashion, critiquing the garment industry's wrapped-and-bound feminine ideal and the notion of woman as spectacle. But irony in Daley's cultural criticism is the source of much of the drawing's wit. While recognizing the limitations imposed by old ideals, she also acknowledges their grace and appeal and expresses a certain nostalgia and yearning."

Newzones is pleased to host a solo exhibition by Don Maynard.

Don Maynard's painting is a rich exploration of markings and gestures. He paints with encaustic; a centuries-old technique of working with molten waxes. His paintings become carefully built up surfaces - layer upon layer of texture - revealing subtle traces of symbols and graphic iconography. Various traditional and industrial materials create his highly textured surfaces. Wax meets metal as the artist pushes the limits of his materials, as well as conceived notions of surface.

Don Maynard has exhibited across Canada, and his work is in the collection of The Department of Foreign Affairs, University of Toronto and the Canada Council Art Bank. He is the subject of a half hour segment of "Adrienne Clarkson Presents" produced by the CBC in 1998.

Newzones is pleased to announce an exhibition of photo-based artworks by Toronto's Joshua Jensen-Nagle.

Focusing on industrialized land and city-scapes, Jensen-Nagle's recent photographs question the nature of our relationship with our environment. Caught like long forgotten debris of modern technology, these blurred images of highway overpasses, light standards and assorted industrial stacks create nostalgic works that play on the theme of degradation.

Showing alongside this landscape series is a new series of animal images taking from the Natural History Museum in New York. Also playing on the theme of degradation, Jensen-Nagle's animal series elaborates on the issue of man-made environments to include the breakdown and consumption of the natural environment that surrounds us.

Originally from New Jersey, Joshua Jensen-Nagle moved to Toronto to pursue his artistic education at Ryerson Polytechnic Institute in 1999. Since graduating in 2003, Jensen-Nagle has experimented with image formats, production techniques and materials. For more recent bodies of work, he used a toy camera and expired Polaroid film - the resulting image is then transferred onto canvas and covered in a thick coat of hard, glossy resin.

Newzones is pleased to host an exhibition of photographs by the legendary Andre Kertesz.

Known for his extended study of Washington Square Park and his distorted nudes of the 1930s, Andre Kertesz (1894-1985) was a quiet but important influence on the coming of age of photojournalism and the art of hand-held photography. For more than seventy years, his subtle and penetrating vision helped to define a medium in its infancy. Though he spent most of his life in the United States, his European modernist sensibility is what made him a master, and that is what he is remembered for today. Many of Kertész's photographs, for example The Fork, Esztergom, Swimmer, the Park Bench, or Mondrian's Atelier, are now among the most famous photographs of this century.

Newzones is pleased to present our annual Landscape exhibition.

Traditionally, when one thinks of landscape, the first thing to pop to mind is often natural scenery. We, as a culture, are fascinated by romantic depictions of the prairies, the mountains, or even the sea. When it comes to the fine art of landscape, however, conventions can be thrown asunder, letting the artist redefine the manner in which we view the natural world.

Whether it is through traditional oil on canvas or silver-gelatin photography, the artists in Landscape draw on varying moods and styles to explore our relationship with nature. While the subject base is the same, the artists featured in this year's exhibition have all created their own visual definition of the highly complex idea of Landscape.

Newzones Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by Montreal-based Kevin Sonmor.

Sonmor's iconic work pushes the boundaries between the historical conventions of landscape painting and the contemporary aesthetic of the abstracted landscape. An inspired student of Flemish painting, his visions are dark and atmospheric yet filled with familiar still life objects. These objects float through Sonmor's rich, painterly landscapes, creating powerfully intriguing works that hover between contemporary and historic painting traditions.

Sonmor's paintings capture the feeling of Northern European still-lifes and Vanitas studies, rendering images in hues and shades of feeling while still carrying a distinctive contemporary edge.

Mark Daniel Cohen, a New York City-based artist/writer wrote about Sonmor's paintings: "…Sonmor paints with the certain craft of a master, with the sure touch of a virtuoso, not for the sake of the pride in technique but for something more imperative: for the efficacy of the art, for the sake of what art is for — the penetration through to a truth of our essential nature that we realize but cannot hold for more than the briefest moment."

Born in Lacombe, Alberta in 1959, Sonmor received his Masters of Fine Arts from Concordia University, Montreal. His paintings have been widely exhibited across Canada and United States in both solo and group exhibitions. In 2002, Mendel Art Gallery organized a traveling exhibition of Sonmor's work titled The Landscape Perilous: Kevin Sonmor Paintings 1998-2002. Sonmor is a recipient of numerous Canada Council Grants and his work may be found in many private and public collections including the University of Waterloo, Art Gallery of Algoma and Government of Canada.

Newzones is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by Angela Grossmann.

Angela Grossmann has devoted much of her career to examining the themes of displacement and social margins. Her most recent series, Alpha Girls, explores the world of the teenaged girl and the subtle power struggles found within.

Populating this world are young girls in ruffled party dresses, teenagers in various layers of underwear and gossamer clothing. Grossmann's Alpha Girls all stare out at the viewer like a bevy of Lolitas with cutting, almost sardonic smiles. Upon closer inspection, however, it becomes apparent that these works are not entirely about innocence but, instead, the power and frailty of female adolescence. For the past two decades, Grossmann has explored the broader social construction of gender and sexuality, and the conjoining of sexuality and consumerism.

On Grossmann's Alpha Girls, The Georgia Straight visual arts critic Robin Laurence writes:

"In these images… innocence plays against knowingness, confrontation against seduction, individuality against conformity. Budding young bodies are depicted in vulnerable states of nudity and cover, in various layers of underwear and diaphanous outerwear, suggesting the ways in which girls and women internalize the patriarchal agenda and make objects of themselves. The ghostliness of the faint, sweet faces from the past butts up against a jarring sense of the contemporary."

Born in 1955 in London, England, Angela Grossmann graduated from Emily Carr College of Art and Design in 1985 and received her Masters of Fine Arts from Concordia University in 1991. While still a student in 1985, Grossmann was introduced as one of the Vancouver Art Gallery's "Young Romantic" painters most likely to influence the course of painting in that decade. The "Young Romantics" also known as the "Vancouver Five" took the Canadian art world by storm in the mid 80s. Grossmann continues to be one of Canada's premiere painters with numerous exhibitions and artist grants to her name and was recently declared by the Art Newspaper as "one of the most influential artists in the UK."

Grossmann has taught painting at Ottawa University (1991 to 1993) and University of British Columbia (1997-2000) and currently teaches painting and theory at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design.

Newzones is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by Marie Lannoo.

Moving between abstraction and representation, Lannoo's paintings exert a potent physiological effect on those who stand in front of them. Made up of many fluid layers, these simmering surfaces subtly shift in colour and texture as you move around them. Lannoo's works are, in essence, richly coloured mirrors composed of paint that aptly question the manner in which the human presence can be added into a painting.

Lannoo interest in testing the physicality of her paintings continues in her new series, Sight, Unseen. Connected both conceptually and physically, each painting in Sight, Unseen has been constructed from a section of another painting in the series. This association creates a poetic sense of continuity while still highlighting the individual brilliance of each piece.

Part of a provocative dialogue with Saskatchewan's painting history, Lannoo's works have, in the words of Timothy Long, head curator at the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, "reinvigorated the traditions of abstraction that have persisted in Saskatchewan for over four decades." Marie Lannoo is steadily becoming one of Canada's leading abstractionist painters.

Lannoo was born in 1954 in Delhi, Ontario. She attended the University of Saskatchewan and studied painting at the Banff School of Arts as well as in Virton, Belgium. Her work has been shown in exhibitions throughout Canada and internationally. The Government of Alberta, Canada Council Art Bank, University of Saskatchewan and many more have purchased Lannoo's work. Much has been written about her paintings, most recently in the Western Living Magazine, Calgary Herald, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and Canadian Art.

Newzones Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by Calgary-based Bradley Harms.

Using acrylics and contrasting warm and iridescent colours such as baby blues and 70's brown, Harms's paintings are perfect examples of Canada's new abstraction painting. While almost appearing manufactured or digitally rendered, first appearances can be deceiving. Instead, each piece is meticulously rendered by hand making Harm's work is as much about craft as it is about the motion of emotions. Drawing on techniques borrowed from op-art and colour theory, meaning shifts with movement as tiny lines of paint blur into each other and shift optically with the viewer's every blink.

Born in 1971, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Bradley Harms received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Calgary in 1996 and his Masters of Fine Arts from the prestigious School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been exhibited through North America and Europe. His work can be found in many international public collections such as the Canada Council's Artbank (Ottawa, ON), Alberta Foundation for the Arts (Edmonton, AB), the Nickle Arts Museum (Calgary, AB), University of Western Sydney (Sydney, Australia) and Tama Art University (Tokyo, Japan).

Newzones Gallery of Contemporary Art is pleased to announce Maquettes and Lesser Digressions, an exhibition featuring new sculptures by Canadian artist David Robinson.

The sculptor's maquette is the final work of art in embryo; it is the artist's earliest inquiries into an idea as it lies as yet unrevealed. The sculptural artefacts yielded by this germinal contemplation reveal core elements of creative thought and process.

David Robinson's sculptures range from intimate to overwhelming in size, demonstrating a great command of media and skill as a figurative artist. Robinson's sculptures juxtapose themselves in urban architectural settings, demonstrating a modernistic approach to a very classical domain in art -- the male nude.

This gallery exhibition of maquettes by sculptor David Robinson illuminates facets of the creative process that are otherwise the sole purview of the working studio.

Born in Toronto, Ontario in 1964, David Robinson received his Bachelors of Fine Arts in Sculpture from Ontario College of Art in 1987. Since then, David Robinson has exhibited in many solo and group exhibitions throughout North America. His work can be found in many public and private collections across Canada.

Newzones is pleased to present our annual summer group exhibition Sunscreen - a spectacular show featuring new and new to Calgary art.

The exhibition will feature artworks by:
Joe Andoe's images, regardless of theme, are simple in their rendering yet complex in their effect, creating a dichotomy that demonstrates the artist's virtuosity with his media and his ability to engage the viewer.

Joshua Jensen-Nagle, whose recent works make use of old Polaroid film transferred to cotton rag and panel. The soft shots of barren nature topped with a slick coat of resin work together to create a warm, ephemeral landscape.

John Kissik, whose paintings are characterized by thick surfaces, aims to create abstract artworks that are both ironic and authentic.

Julian Schnabel was one of the most promoted, as well as self-promoted, and the most critically debated painter of the 1980's, Julian Schnabel may have given the art scene of the boom decade its most representative figure.

Donald Sultan has become known for his compelling visual treatment of everyday, still-life subjects on a gargantuan scale, successfully merging the best of yesterday's artistic tradition with a fresh, modern approach.

Barry Weiss is a self-taught landscape painter.His paintings are reminiscent of old world paintings but contain a unique contemporary edge

Other artists included in the exhibition are Kevin Sonmor, Don Maynard, Evelyne Brader-Frank, Sarah Nind, Jeroen Witvliet, Cathy Daley and Bill Fisher.

Newzones is pleased to present an exhibition of selected works by Jean-Paul Riopelle. Including a series of lithographs as well as works on canvas, this exhibition is a rare opportunity for Calgarians to directly experience a piece of Canadian art history.

While always an important historical figure on the Canadian art scene, Riopelle has garnered recent international attention due to a major solo exhibition opening at the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, this Friday. Organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Riopelle: Canadian Artist - Works from the Collection of Power Corporation of Canada and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts features thirty paintings and works on paper that span the whole of the artist's career.

Presented in a more intimate environment, the work on display at Newzones also taps directly into Riopelle's iconic history. Featured are four lithographs from his late 60's period as well as a large-scale (60 x 72 in.) painting on canvas from 1959-60. This large painting is a signature Riopelle demonstrating the bold colours, fluid brushstrokes and thick impasto representative of his Lyrical Abstraction phase of the 1950s.

For those collectors looking to own a piece of art history (the lithographs are great entry pieces) or for those who are generally interested in Canadian painting, this exhibition is one the art season's summer gems.

This exhibition is running concurrently with the Triangle Gallery's exhibition Explosion of Forms and Textures: Québec Art of the 1960s from the Bas-Saint-Laurent Museum's Collection .

For more information please contact Tamar Zenith or Helen Zenith at (403) 266-1972.

Newzones is thrilled to announce an exhibition of mixed media artworks by Calgary artist Colleen Philippi.

Colleen Philippi is an extraordinary artist whose life experiences and travels have led to the uniqueness of her work. She has lived in Berlin and Paris and has traveled throughout Europe and the former Soviet Union. Her artwork immediately captures the attention. A sense of mysticism comes from the artist's highly creative and personal visual vocabulary; secrets, treasures, allegories, astronomy, poetry, memory, mysteries of the past, time and space... all have a presence and a place.

About Retrospective: a series of Wunderkabinetts Colleen writes:

"This is not a traditional retrospective. Nor is it merely a history of my painting career. All of the pieces in this retrospective are new, completed in 2006. Some of them have had long gestations (so long, in fact, that they themselves are "one piece retrospectives"), while others were painted entirely in 2006. Rather, it is the idea of retrospective that became the unifying concept for this body of work. Being both the Artist featured in and the Curator of my own retrospective, I have been able to engage in a dialogue with the history of my own process.

2007 will mark the twentieth anniversary of my first solo show. Perhaps this awareness, lurking in the recesses of my consciousness, awakened the desire to look back and return to some of the concepts, themes, and other visual obsessions that have held me in thrall: memory, time, play, narrative, mystery, disparities of scale, games, wunderkabinetts, cosmology, islands, maps, gardens (especially those in the French Formal tradition), natural history, birds, various scientific theories, portraits of people and toys, paperdolls, architecture, numbers, letters, literary excerpts, pattern, movement, layering. The project was not to merely revisit "past hits," but to see how reusing and recombining elements of my visual grammar could create new visual narratives, fingerposts. Creatively speaking, I have been walking forward while looking backwards, reviewing into the future . . ."

Newzones is proud to present a solo exhibition of important paintings by Gershon Iskowitz.

Gershon Iskowitz was born in 1921 in Kielce, Poland where he spent his childhood. After surviving internment during the Second World War, Iskowitz was sent to recover in Germany. In 1947 he privately studied with Oskar Kokoschka at the Munich Academy. In 1949 he immigrated to Toronto. Gershon was known to spend his days in bars and cafés along Spadina Avenue mentoring artists and in the evenings he retreated to his studio where through the night he painted his intensely personal visions - keeping painting alive at a time when the art establishment proclaimed painting was dead.

Initially Iskowitz's work documented painful wartime imagery and memories. Gradually his paintings and drawings transformed to loose impressions of the countryside and by the sixties became expressive abstractions of light and colour. A major shift - a signature style evolved - when in 1967, Iskowitz took his first helicopter ride around the vicinity of Churchill, Manitoba. Exhilarated by the experience, impressed by the pattern of brilliant colours and forms his colour became more intense, combining texture and transparency by painting layer after layer of irregular forms. Looking down through patches of clouds, his helicopter trips transformed his views of the landscape - "my paintings are not abstract, they are real, they are very very much real, I see those things…I paint what I see." Iskowitz's aerial views of the land continue to influence the work of artists today -reflecting the expansiveness of Canada's vast territories and quality of Northern light.

Early in Gershon Iskowitz's career he exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada and in 1972 he was one of two artists representing Canada at the XXXVI Venice Biennial in Venice, Italy. In 1982 the Art Gallery of Ontario organized a retrospective exhibition as well as published a book on the artist's life and his art. This exhibition traveled to museums across the country and then to Canada House in London, England. In 1985 the Gershon Iskowitz Foundation and the Gershon Iskowitz Prize were established with the assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts. "We were born for the future, not for today", said Iskowitz, leaving a part of himself to survive and to benefit others as he had benefited from his life in Canada. Each year the Foundation awards the Gershon Iskowitz Prize - a 25,000 dollar award - one of the most prestigious visual arts awards in our country; however, Iskowitz's greatest contribution was providing the inspiration for others as he devoted his life to art.

Newzones is honoured and privileged to present a selection of superb paintings by the late Gershon Iskowitz who was able to transcend the horror of the experiences of his youth to create a body of work filled with light, brilliant colour and joy.

Helen Zenith, Director

Newzones is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of painting and photographic works by Sarah Nind.

Sarah Nind's works play off of a variety of dichotomies- photography versus painting, real versus imaginary, romantic versus paradisiacal, interior versus exterior, physical versus emotional. Beginning with a black and white photograph exposed onto ortholith film, Nind uses highly colored oil paints to tint the background from behind, creating an erie mix of color and darkness, converting the serene photos into a pop- like mixed media artwork. The artworks are dark yet give off light at the same time.

Sarah Nind was born in Kuala Belait, Brunei, Borneo and currently resides in Toronto. She attended the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris in 1979 and completed a Bachelor Degree in Architecture from the University of Toronto in 1981. In 1994 she completed a Master's Degree in Fine Arts from York University. Nind has exhibited extensively throughout Canada and the United States. Her work can be found in various public, private and corporate collections. Sarah Nind will also be part of a group exhibition entitled The Painted Photograph at the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (CMCP) in Ottawa, Ontario. The exhibition willl run from May 05 until November 19, 2006 in the Main Level of the CMCP Gallery.

Newzones is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by Anda Kubis.

As a painter Kubis is aware of how colour and composition create desire. In her latest series, she uses form and colour to create layered, floating screens and pulses of luminosity. In our physical and virtual landscape light is integral in the delivery of visual communication. Her works emanate a glow that can either be (and not to the exclusion of the other) attributed to the philosophical sublime or more immediately suggest enticing radiant surfaces that bring pleasure to objects designed for popular use - iPod's, Miele vacuum cleaners, the buildings of William Alsop etc. Stacked high, the compressed compositions stand as a metaphor for merging territories and the potential for coalescing communities. These works reflect the ideals of a progressive, global, consumer society where the primary visual language is that of hopeful promotion. The recent body of work is a way of openly engaging the artist's utopian aspirations - not with irony but to find out if this worldview is even tenable today.

Born in Toronto, Ontario in 1962, Anda Kubis received her Bachelors of Fine Arts from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1987 and her Master's of Fine Arts from York University in 1992. Her paintings have been widely exhibited across Canada in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Anda Kubis is currently an associate professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design.

IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOU DO AS LONG AS NOBODY GETS HURT

Newzones is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by Suzan Dionne.

These recent paintings by Dionne are concerned with a belief system in a state of crisis and full of internal contradiction. In some of the paintings, halo images prevail, blackened, charred or falling as if they have recently come back from some dubious adventure. The paintings are a reference to our conflicted register of good and evil, a reference to culture wars, crusades and to wars of ideology.

Dionne describes her new body of work:

"All of these works, whether the images are halos or otherwise, have to do with things gone awry, with breakdown. Sometimes it's violent, sometimes it's a quiet change and sometimes the paintings have a heavy-handed quality that makes them a little bit deadpan and a little bit funny."

Suzan Dionne is a Canadian Artist currently pursuing her artistic practice in the epicenter of visual arts, culture, and design: New York City. Dionne's educational background is impressive. Amongst her artistic accomplishments, completing her BFA from Queen's University, her Masters Degree in the visual arts at Concordia University, and attending The Banff School of Fine Arts, she also studied physics (Concordia University), economics (Concordia University), philosophy (The University of Calgary), and music (Ontario Conservatory of Music).

The selection of Marie Lannoo's works chosen for this exhibit consist of both paintings and paper works that clearly embrace both the idea of "Footprint" and "Imprint". A footprint can be an impression left behind by a shoe or a foot or it can be the space taken up on a surface by an object. An imprint can be both physical and psychological- the act of impressing or stamping a mark (or outline) on a surface or it can be the fixing of an idea firmly in someone's mind. In terms of the footprint, Marie Lannoo has taken careful steps in layering, banding and marking color on the surfaces of her paintings in order to draw the viewer in deeper and closer. Her glossy surfaces allow a reflection of the surroundings, including the viewer as a temporary imprint on the painting. Individually, each piece has it's own distinctive markings and brush strokes, each viewing slightly different. As a group the paintings create continuous motion, urging the viewer to move this way and that, closer and farther away, each time inflicting a different image upon the viewer.

Newzones is pleased to present our annual landscape exhibition featuring ten leading contemporary painters' explorations of landscape. LANDSCAPE X 12 is an exhibition of works by LORENZO DUPUIS, JOHN FOLSOM, PETER HOFFER, LYNN MALIN, TIMOTHY MCDOWELL, SARAH NIND, DON POLLACK, PAT SERVICE, ERICA SHUTTLEWORTH, BARRY WEISS, JEROEN WITVLIET, and introducing JOSHUA JENSEN-NAGLE.

Landscape is traditionally defined as a genre of art dealing with the depiction of natural scenery. All ten artists are pushing the boundaries of landscape painting to produce work that is both personal and universal in its depiction of the natural world that surrounds us.

Although each deals with the commonly portrayed genre of the landscape, this is the only cohesion to the artworks. The media range from traditional oil on canvas to silver-gelatin photography to encaustic. The styles skip from romantic to fractured to expressive. The mood changes from somber to calm to vibrant.

Newzones is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Don Pollack.

Pollack's paintings are extremely detailed, highly realistic landscapes, which resemble photographs or 19th Century landscape paintings with their high-gloss finish. Pollack's paintings however, add an element of uncertainty to the classical representations of nature we are used to. Pollack represents nature as a force that cannot be contained or defined by human constructs. In his work, nature always manages to insinuate an element of the untamable and the unexpected into human attempts to impose meaning and order on it.

Born in 1958, Chicago, Illinois, Don Pollack received his Bachelors of Fine Arts from the University of Illinois and his Masters of Fine Arts from the Ohio State University. His work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout North America. Since 1986, Don Pollack has been teaching art at the Illinois Institute of Art in Chicago, Illinois.

Newzones is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by DON MAYNARD.

Blue River Series, an installation of ninety small paper works, is a meditaion on the emotional and psychological meanings of rivers to people. Inspired by the coast of Newfoundland, these works explore the relationship between human consciousness and the movement of water. Each individual piece reveals an intuitive understanding of the gestures, thoughts and emotions rivers elicit in the human psyche. When grouped together, the diversity of the individual is evident and the whole becomes a metaphor for human experience.

Don paints with encaustic, a centuries-old technique of working with molten waxes. His paintings become carefully built up surfaces - layer upon layer of texture - revealing subtle traces of symbols and graphic iconography. He explains his process for Blue River Series:

"During my time in Newfoundland, I started a group of paper works with languid flowing lines carved into a thick field of white beeswax, which I [then] filled with pure ultramarine pigment. This [is] a new direction in my work both aesthetically and technically."

Born in Toronto in 1955 Don Maynard has exhibited across Canada and internationally. His work is in the collection of The Department of Foreign Affairs, the University of Toronto and the Canada Council Art Bank. He was the subject of a half hour segment of "Adrienne Clarkson Presents" produced by the CBC in 1998.

Newzones is pleased to announce an exhibition of new mixed media artworks by Timothy McDowell.

Timothy McDowell's most recent work explores images and systems within nature. This imagery portrays organic forms in an expansive, all-inclusive manner, incorporating the scientific as well as the idyllic associations with nature and our world. He attempts to portray the excess that is nature. McDowell's process incorporates old maps lined to the linen canvas. During the lining and waxing, subtle aspects of the maps peek through the image side and these "bleed-throughs" are used in the design of the finished piece. The overall effect creates luminous forms that seem to float in an undefined space.

McDowell was born in 1953 in Texas and obtained his BFA at the Midwestern State University and his MFA at the University of Arizona. His paintings have been exhibited widely across North America and Europe. These beautiful encaustic abstract paintings can be found in many international collections including The Bank of America, The William Benton Museum of Art, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. His artworks have been widely published with such publications as The Art of Encaustic Painting by Joanne Mattera and Flora by Four Contemporary Artists by Ivette Lee.

Newzones is pleased to announce an exhibition of new works by Sophie Jodoin.

Diary of K. ; a journal of " drawings " is a series of spontaneous yet austere monochrome portraits of K. done in oil on mylar and charcoal on paper. These works are essentially, irreducible encounters with K.'s personality and existence as a little person. K. is revealed as accurately and as humanly possible, without cynicism and despair, and without sentimentality and subterfuges.

Gary Michael Dault of the Globe and Mail writes:

"The work is stark and, in a sense, unsparing, but it is, at the same time, unsparingly affectionate, respectful, dignified, exhalting. K stands there as powerful as a dwarf in a Velasquez- to whom Jodoin can be compared in terms of her sheer skill as a draftsman."

Born in Montreal in 1965, Sophie Jodoin received her Bachelors of Fine Arts from Concordia University in 1988 and studied anatomy at the New York Academy of Art. Her paintings have been widely exhibited across Canada and the United States. She was one of the few artists selected to represent Montreal for Made in Canada: Contemporary Art in Montreal exhibition at the Plattsburgh State University Museum in New York.

Newzones is pleased to announce a solo exhibition titled Analog by Bradley Harms. Harms' energetic abstractions combined with his careful attention to the application of paint create a heightened awareness of the surface. The paintings reference digital technology without compromising the traditional painting technique. The paintings become witness to the time in which they are made.

Born in 1971, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Bradley Harms received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Calgary in 1996 and his Masters of Fine Arts from the prestigious School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been exhibited through North America and Europe. Harms is a recipient of numerous grants and awards including the Alberta Foundation for the Art production grant. His work can be found in many international public collections such as the Canada Council's Artbank (Ottawa, ON), Alberta Foundation for the Arts (Edmonton, AB), the Nickle Arts Museum (Calgary, AB), University of Western Sydney (Sydney, Australia) and Tama Art University (Tokyo, Japan).

Newzones is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by an American artist John Folsom. Folsom captures raw images with his camera and then digitally alters them in order to build his own version of the landscape. Upon returning to the studio John Folsom pieces together these images using basic elements of historical painting, sublime images created from the placement of wood, water,and rock. The final image is comprised of photographic paper adhered to wood. The works are further enhanced with paint and wax, but the pigment is applied in a manner that suggests digital enhancement.

John Folsom received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Cinema and Photography from the Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL in 1990. Folsom has exhibited extensively throughout North America. His work can be found in public collections such as the Tennessee State Museum (Nashville, TN) and the Christoph Merian Foundation (Basel, Switzerland).

Newzones Gallery of Contemporary Art is pleased to present our annual summer group exhibition Sunscreen - a rotating show of multi-media artworks. After all, summer is a time for letting loose and enjoying an explosion of sensory delights! The exhibition will be featuring new artworks by Timothy McDowell, Elizabeth McIntosh, Jeff Nachtigall, Kevin Sonmor, Barry Weiss, and Jeroen Witvliet.

Newzones Gallery is delighted to introduce works by Anda Kubis and Erica Shuttleworth and our new acquisitions by Ross Bleckner, Graham Gillmore, Damien Hirst, and Sean Scully.