Happy Holidays
We are so grateful to the artists, collectors & art community for the continued support this year. From each of us at Dianna Witte Gallery, we wish you and yours a warm and happy holiday season.
Contemporary art gallery located in Toronto, established in 2002. Dianna Witte Gallery is focused on showcasing emerging and mid-career artists working in painting and photo-based art.
Happy Holidays
We are so grateful to the artists, collectors & art community for the continued support this year. From each of us at Dianna Witte Gallery, we wish you and yours a warm and happy holiday season.
Visit our new Online Shop at the link below.
We are currently featuring small works on our shop including the Gary Clement Early Capsule Release, our Winter Salon and Ric Santon's Migration series. Check back regularly for new additions.
GARY CLEMENT
EARLY RELEASE
FRIDAY DECEMBER 4TH @ 12PM
HOLIDAY GROUP SHOW
WINDOW GALLERY
DECEMBER 4TH - 20TH
Ric Santon |
Douglas Walker |
Fiona Freemark |
Kim Atlin |
Leah Rainey |
Casey Roberts |
Samantha Walrod |
Due to COVID restrictions in-person viewings of Casey Roberts' show have been cut short, but we hope you enjoy these installation views of his solo exhibition which continues until November 28th. As of Monday November 23rd our gallery with be closed for visits, however, we are still available by email and phone, and our artists' portfolios are up-to-date on our website. We will be offering pick-up at the gallery and local delivery. If you would like to request more information or photos, we would be happy to help.
CASEY ROBERTS
LINGERER
NOVEMBER 6TH - 28TH
Owls, rabbits, the rare white buffalo, and whales are stand-ins for humans in Roberts's paintings; the tension and collaboration between man and nature is a repeated trope throughout Roberts's career--a trope that is mirrored in the photochemical process that is used to procure the paintings. The elaborate process, known as the cyanotype, depends on sunlight's reaction (nature) with chemicals, such as baking soda, peroxide, and bleach, (man) to create vibrant shades of cyan blue.
Casey's way of creating a painting is precarious: the process is akin to printmaking, using chemicals and light opposed to carving. The paintings are built up of layers; Roberts stencils off portions and exposes the paper to light, repeating this process until the painting is complete. He often finishes the paintings with elements of watercolour or collage, and leaves evidence of the process--an integral part of the work--with the holes used to pin the paper to the wall framing the exterior. A wrong move late in the process renders the work void and Roberts is forced to start over. The high stakes of the creative process imbue the paintings with a tension that is opposite to the balanced calm of the composition, creating work ripe with complexity.
In Roberts's drawings there are elements of abstraction and self-referential nods scattered throughout the realism. Patterns are found on tabletops, trees, and vases, resulting in unexpected texture and humour. Turn off the lights and the moon floating over the owl glows in the dark. The care and detail Roberts places in his fantastical tableaus seem to have no bounds, allowing the viewer to fall inside and live in his unique world.
Roberts received his degree from the Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis, IN. In September of 2019 he exhibited a solo show at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center at Depauw University. He has work in numerous collections, including the Indiana State Museum, the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, the US Department of State, Eli Lilly, Indiana University and more. Roberts lives and works in Indianapolis, IN.Join us for the closing reception of Corri-Lynn Tetz' solo exhibition, Soft Touch. Corri-Lynn first exhibited with us in Summer Forecast, a group show curated by Tatum Dooley in 2019. We are thrilled to be featuring Tetz again with her first solo show at Dianna Witte Gallery. Meet with gallery director, Dianna Witte, and artist, Corri-Lynn for a discussion about her latest series of oil paintings.
CORRI-LYNN TETZ
SOFT TOUCH
OCTOBER 9TH - 31ST
RECEPTION: SATURDAY OCTOBER 31ST AT 2, 3 & 4PM
*RSVP REQUIRED BELOW - DETAILS MAY CHANGE DUE TO COVID RESTRICTIONS*
We are pleased to present Soft Touch, a solo exhibition by Corri-Lynn Tetz. Corri-Lynn first exhibited with us in Summer Forecast, a group show curated by Tatum Dooley in 2019. We are thrilled to be featuring Tetz again this fall with her first solo show at Dianna Witte Gallery.
Corri-Lynn Tetz’s work focuses on the female figure as a way to explore identity, sensation and desire. Working from personal archives, fashion photography, film and pornography, she is interested in the ways images and meaning are transformed through painting and how this process disrupts notions of the gaze to re-imagine pictorial space. In this, intuitive paint handling distances each piece from its source, as she often uses disparate colour, and inventive figuration, to create the impression of transformation, affect and sensation. Her intention is that each painting occupies a space between representation and abstraction - that form provides enough information to convey bodies and space, without losing the immediacy of that first, energized, layer of paint.
In the past year, Tetz has focused her paintings on representations of feminine sexuality. Working from ‘80s and ‘90s porn, she is interested in the ways painting unexpectedly transforms the meaning of the images and how it disrupts the primacy of the male gaze. In these images, newly embodied figures are acting on their own terms and in their own skin, free from the shame, class and dogma that might complicate the viewers relationship to such overt expressions of female sexuality.
Corri-Lynn received her BFA from Emily Carr University in 2003 and her MFA from Concordia University in 2015. She has received numerous awards and fellowships including the Project Fellowship from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, the Residency Fellowship from the Brucebo Foundation, the Fine Arts Travel Fellowship from Concordia University, and more. She is the recipient of a Canada Council for the Arts grant.
We invite you to join us for a closing reception on Saturday October 31st at 2, 3 & 4PM. We kindly ask that visitors book their time slot with us in advance. In order to maintain physical distancing measures we are limiting each time slot and request that you wear a face mask. Our hope is that these intimate receptions will create a more memorable experience for the artist and viewer. If you have any questions, please email us at info@diannawitte.com.
We look forward to seeing you!
We are pleased to present Fall Forecast, a group show curated by Tatum Dooley (@cdnartforecast), and featuring work by Marissa Y Alexander, Anni Spadafora, Kizi Spielmann Rose and Alex Kisilevich. This exhibition is Dooley's second curatorial project in a series of collaborations with Dianna Witte Gallery.
Art has prepared me for living with a significant lack of human touch—gone is the weight of a hug, a spontaneous hand grasped for a few moments. While six feet of distance between each other still feels alien, we are used to not touching art. In fact, we embrace the boundary of this interaction as a necessary part of art's preservation. The lack of touch adds something, a closer way of looking.
I didn’t mean to curate a show that so closely revolves around touch, but looking at the group of artists I feel that’s what subconsciously happened. Simply by looking at the works in fall forecast, we can understand their texture. The patterns of Anni Spadafora's textiles and Kizi Spielmann Rose's paintings are contemporary takes on textile patterns—plaid and weaves made dynamic through glitches, saturated colours, and bio-metric layers.
Marissa Y Alexander's ceramics likewise are made up of layers that compile to make a deceivingly flat surface—solid and smooth. A three-dimensional ceramic that's camouflaged as a painting.
In addition to Alex Kisilevich’s photographs, his video work captures impossible movement—fabric dancing without touch or wind. The result is magical, opening up the possibilities of a world without touch, but not without tenderness.
Tatum Dooley is a writer based in Toronto. Her work has appeared in Artforum, Bordercrossings, Canadian Art, Garage Magazine, Lapham's Quarterly, The Walrus and more. In addition to writing, Tatum curated her first art exhibition at Dianna Witte Gallery in 2019. She has written curatorial essays for Inter/Access in Toronto and Parisian Laundry in Montreal.