Trevor Kiernander // Trade Skins 

Gallery open: Wed-sat, 12.30-5.00 pm

Preview Friday 29 January, 6.30-8.30 pm in association with Deptford Last Fridays

Please click here for more works by Trevor Kiernander

BEARSPACE is pleased to present painting works by Canadian artist Trevor Kiernander in his first solo exhibition in the UK, to coincide with a major exhibition of his works at Art Mur, in Montreal, Canada in May 2010.

For Trade Skins, Kiernander has created four new works on large-scale canvases filling the gallery walls.  Each work is an abstract combination of hand-mixed block colour and painterly gestures, referencing Canadian hinterland with hard edged architectural forms, as Kiernander describes his own experience of traveling from ‘a small town in southern Canada to Europe’s largest metropolis.’  Works are painted skillfully in Oils, with the introduction of foreign materials, pieces of hand painted tape and charcoal, among the few.  His seemingly loose and effortless style is contrasted by jarring new elements whilst odd shapes and figures emerge to disturb an otherwise peaceful scene.

Paintings by Trevor Kiernander are based on the dynamics created by process, space, and juxtaposition.  Using these elements the artist can reveal the movement behind compositions, creating a dimension to the paintings that is both ethereal and representational.  The artist is concerned with relationships and detachment, both of which are present in Kiernanders’s large-scale works.

By extension, Kiernander has developed a cultural vocabulary that is capable of anticipating the nuances of the image.  By disrupting the rhythm of this visual continuity, Trevor’s detached marks and displaced images become pseudo-landscapes and disconcerting scenarios. In the oscillation between the abstract and the recognizable, Trevor responds to the media influence of an image-saturated culture.

Trevor Kiernander was born in Canada and currently lives and works in London.  He obtained a BFA w/ distinction from Concordia University in Montreal (2006), and an MFA in Art Practice from Goldsmiths University of London (2009).  He was short-listed for the Eastern Division of the Canada-wide RBC Painting Competition in 2007 and was recently published in Carte Blanche 2, a compendium of Canadian painting (Magenta, 2008).