ALL MY BUTTERED BAGELS
JEFFREY HARRISON
JUNE 8TH - 30TH
OPENING RECEPTION: JUNE 8TH, 7-9PM
Parts Gallery is pleased to present ALL MY BUTTERED BAGELS, by Toronto artist Jeffrey Harrison. This will be Parts Gallery's fourth solo exhibition of Harrison's work.
Painting
has a myriad of rules that it keeps under wraps, laboured on behind the
scenes as to not disrupt the illusion of an effortless masterpiece.
There are rules of perspective and composition, ratios, and colour
theory. The result is familiar paintings that we’re used to looking at,
that we can easily understand and classify. It can get a little boring
after awhile.
Jeff
Harrison shuns the notion that paintings should have rules. And his
paintings are anything but boring. Instead, he lets the painting do what
he feels it has to do, and bends the rules
of the medium to somehow make it work. And it does: The result is
chaotic, a departure from the safety we’ve come to know in paintings.
Vibrant colours, flowers, and fluid shapes fill the paintings; as if the
amorphous figures are begging to be included, squeezed into the canvas.
Harrison’s
paintings are objects that we interact with: they make their
physicality known through size, texture, and colour. The energy in them
is palatable. ALL MY BUTTERED BAGELS deviates slightly from Harrison’s
previous series, with the motif of nature and flowers at the forefront
(flowers on acid, albeit). Harrison’s own relationship to nature and
gardening influences this motif, with elements from his life
incorporated into the paintings.
Looking
at Harrison’s paintings, we realize that there’s pleasure in chaos. Our
eyes flutter through the work, finding new sections and passageways
with each glance. A psychedelic Rorschach Test, we can attribute what we
want onto the paintings, and it tells us something about ourselves.
Please join us for an opening reception on Friday June 8th from 7-9PM.
