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Sep 13 – Oct 11, 2025
Newzones is thrilled to announce River's Way, a solo exhibition of new work by Canadian contemporary artist, Yechel Gagnon. For the past 30 years, Canadian artist Yechel Gagnon has created a distinctive visual language using plywood as an artistic material to create bas-reliefs. River’s way speaks to the power and the enduring beauty of the natural world. The carved imagery transitions between abstraction and depiction, forming an elegant allegory in response to the artist’s natural surroundings viewed, lived and transposed through her creative process. Evoking a connection between time and place, these fictional landscapes embrace multiple perspectives interweaving elements of nature to produce various transitions and viewpoints. The rhythms and implicit passages of time calls to mind either the cycles of seasons or of days. This new series of works consists of plywood panels fashioned with coloured stained veneers that are hand-carved with various tools, obtaining a personal language of mark making that is both sculptural and painterly. Gagnon’s ability to create rich effects without using any paint highlights her mastery of wood carving as an artistic medium. The textures and nuances that she excavates from her panels create delicate transitions that subtly shift throughout the pieces. Working in symbiosis with the material at hand, she creates a distinctive visual language that reveals interconnectedness between art and our surrounding world. It is now proven by neuroscience that aesthetic experiences that derive from viewing art or being in contact with nature enhance our neuroplasticity and help our cognitive health. Gagnon, always being in sync with this general idea, offers us bas-reliefs that are aesthetically rich and constantly evolving according to the ambient lighting reverberating on their surfaces. In this matter, River’s way is a homage to the radiance and resilience of Nature as something both outside and within us. Born in Longueuil in 1973, Yechel Gagnon holds a Master of Fine Arts Degree (Studio Arts) from Concordia University and an AOCAD with Honours in Drawing and Painting from the Ontario College of Art and Design. Gagnon’s works have been exhibited in museums, galleries, artist-run centres, biennales and art fairs throughout Canada, the United States, France and China. She is the recipient of numerous public art projects awarded by the Art and Architecture Integration Policy of the Ministry of Culture and communications of Quebec. One of her latest project is a 140-foot-long bas-relief mural that unfolds in the main building of a medical centre. Her works have also been commissioned for diverse institutions such as universities, cultural and medical centres, places of worship and corporate milieus both in Canada and in the United States. Gagnon is the recipient of numerous grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des arts de Longueuil and Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, which awarded her the prestigious CALQ Creator of the Year award. She holds a Master of Fine Arts Degree (Studio Arts) from Concordia University in Montreal and an AOCAD with Honours in Drawing and Painting from the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto. Magsamen, Susan and Ross, Ivy. Your Brain on Art, New York, Random House, 2023
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