Alex D'Arcy: "Nocturnes"

KWT contemporary is pleased to welcome Alex D'Arcy back to Toronto, and to her first solo exhibition with the gallery, following completion of her graduate studies at Central St. Martin's School for Art in London, UK. This new suite of paintings represents a visual synthesis of her experiences in the built urban environments of the old and new worlds of London and Toronto. While developing this body of work, D'Arcy immersed herself in Chopin's piano sonatas, which informed the rhythm, movement and colour sequences of the paintings themselves. The result is an exhibition of oils on canvas which is, in totality, cooly elegant, restrained, and yet vibrantly alive.

Regarding her latest work, D'Arcy states: "Chopin's Nocturnes are melancholic, elegiac demonstrations between form and mood. Counterpoint to create tension, a technique for Chopin, evokes my own tandem interests as a painter. As with the music, weaving through the compositional structure of the paintings are broken chords that animate the space around them. Many of the works in this exhibition begin from the formal structure of optical relations, or how subtle variations in color will strive to become as different from each other as possible when put side by side. The seemingly neutral ground in the work becomes the support, an animated space, an active context that holds and dissembles, conceals and reveals. These relationships, among the individual colours and in relation to the space that holds them, can foster mood or provoke emotional experience."


Here is a virtual tour of the current exhibition, "Nocturnes", which closes on Jan 7, 2012. Please note that we are open by appointment only from Dec. 22 to Jan. 7.

In the window: "Untitled #5", 2011, o/c, 36x48

Seven small studies, 10x12, and preceeding those, "Grey Map", 2010, 38x54

"Snowblind" 2010, 51x39,  and to the right, "Untitled 12", 2011 and "Untitled 10", 2011, each 26x48

Far right: "Nocturne 5", 2011, 38x54

 Detail showing brushwork

"Nocturne 3" 2011, 38x54

Detail of Nocturne 3

"Nocturne 5" 2011 38x54

" Untitled 14", 2010, 28x40

"Turn III", 2011, 38x54

Heather Nicol: "What You (may) Want"

In the "better late than never" category, here is a virtual tour of Heather Nicol's exhibition, "What You (may) Want", which closed on November 19,  2011. Nicol is a multidisciplinary artist, whose practise includes hybrid audio sculptures, sound and light installations, and independent curating.

Exterior shots give a first glimpse of the red "Salon" installation, and the two sound sculptures, "The Object" and "The Lesson", with narratives by Tahireh Lal and Martin Julien, respectively.

The Salon Wall:

"The Lesson"

"When I Get Married (should I get married): featuring the spoken spontaneous thoughts, wishes, hopes and opinions of 20 school girls on the subject of weddings and marriage, from interviews collected by Nicol over several years. The unvarnished truth: surprising, funny and poignant, these childish voices exhibit the keen powers of observation peculiar to the very young.

Small speakers are hidden in the flowers around the perimeter of the sculpture.

"Below the Waist": in which a female voice prescribes an uncannily prescient series of instructions on the proper viewing of art... how close to stand, when to step back, fold your arms, circle the work, and so fort.

A small salon installation in the Mezzanine.