Ben Reeves @ Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto - Slack Tide

Ben Reeves: Slack Tide

Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto

November 5 - 26, 2022

Nicholas Metivier Gallery presents Slack Tide, an exhibition of new paintings by BEN REEVES. This is Ben Reeves’ second solo exhibition at the gallery. 

Having resided in British Columbia for most of his life, Ben Reeves is acutely aware of the natural world and our shifting relationship with it. For this exhibition, Ben Reeves reflects on "back-to-the-land" activities and wildlife encounters that are at once utopian and ominous. Practices of casting a fishing net, digging for clams and foraging for mushrooms are portrayed in an ethereal light, opening passageways for fantastical elements including a forest floor composed of colourful sea stars. Ben Reeves' signature impasto and collaged surfaces are also at play, echoing the physical, sensory and emotional experience of the places he depicts in his paintings. 

While the forest scenes recall Ben Reeves’ childhood memories of growing up in Lynn Valley, the fisher paintings reflect on his experiences in Newfoundland. When locals would toss their nets into the ocean to catch small fish, Ben Reeves was particularly drawn to the formlessness of the nets while in midair. He sees the act as a metaphor for painting, a process that is hard to pin down and difficult to describe. Ben Reeves often avoids the use of horizon lines which when absent, flatten the perspective and emphasize the mysterious qualities of water - its vastness and its depth. 

Places are experienced physically, sensorily and emotionally, but also culturally. Painting has these similar dimensions and, for both, they do not all perfectly align. So there is always work to be done and many mysteries to consider.

 

The paintings in “Slack Tide” explore pasts, presents and futures of so-called natural places that skirt urban areas. There is a sense that these spaces have multiple histories and meanings. As a result, we have multiple identities within them.

– Ben Reeves

NICHOLAS METIVIER GALLERY

190 Richmond Street East, Toronto, ON M5A 1P1

metiviergallery.com

_______________

Juliette Agnel @ Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto - Les Nocturnes

Juliette Agnel: Les Nocturnes

Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto

November 5 – 26, 2022

Nicholas Metivier Gallery presents Les Nocturnes, an exhibition of new photographs by Juliette Agnel.  This is Juliette Agnel’s first solo exhibition at the gallery. 

For over two decades, Juliette Agnel has travelled the world documenting remote landscapes. Her interest in anthropology and archeology alongside a life-long passion for the histories of fallen kingdoms, explorers, and ancient mythologies, has led Agnel to pursue ambitious site-specific projects abroad. Most recently, she has photographed in Greenland, Morocco, Sudan, and the Alps.

This exhibition features Juliette Agnel’s ongoing project, Les Nocturnes, a series she began in 2017. Using composite images, she creates ethereal landscapes surrounded by expansive starry skies. By combining photographs taken at different times of day, she conveys every detail of the terrestrial and cosmic elements in her subjects. 

Juliette Agnel’s latest body of work, Taharqa et la nuit, captures the mysterious beauty of the ruins of Meroe in Sudan, home of the ancient kingdom of Kush and the Pharaoh Taharqa. She was entranced by the power and poetic beauty of the vestiges of the once-mighty empire emerging from the desert sands. Her approach to photographing her nocturnal landscapes lends a surreal quality to the work that transports us to another time.

In all my subjects, there is the presence of terrestrial and cosmic forces. In Meroe, all the sites were built according to the position of the stars, in particular the tombs. The cosmos had a sacred significance. What drives this series is the desire to show the forces that are there, invisible forces, that speak of our origins and the relationship to the sacred and to nature - and to ask myself the question of how to show these forces that animate this place.

– Juliette Agnel

NICHOLAS METIVIER GALLERY

190 Richmond Street East, Toronto, Ontario, M5A 1P1

metiviergallery.com

_________________