Glimmers Of The Radiant Real

The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Ontario
May 12 – September 9, 2018

Art Gallery of Peterborough, Peterborough, Ontario
October 6, 2018 – January 6, 2019

McIntosh Gallery, University of Western, London, Ontario
January 17 – March 16, 2019

The Reach, Abbotsford, BC
Winter, 2020

Artists: Katie Bethune-Leamen, Broadbent Sisters, Daniel Griffin Hunt, Sanaz Mazinani, Sandy Plotnikoff, Mary Pratt, Cole Swanson, Catherine Telford-Keogh, Xiaojing Yan

What happens when surfaces glitter, gleam, sparkle, and shine?

The artists and works featured in the Glimmers of the Radiant Real exhibition use a variety of materials to generate these surface effects, from glass to gold, foil, plastic, and pearls. Each material has its own qualities of shine and reflection. The surfaces they offer are seeded with aesthetic associations from glamour to kitsch, celebration to science.

For the viewer, the resulting effect of each work is a combination of material familiarity and perceptual distortion. Surface is the point of contact for the body, it’s skin and texture and touch. The contact between light and surface in these shining, sparkling works creates, variably, the mirrored illusion of extended space, the fracturing and projection of the viewer’s body, rainbow refractions of white gallery light, and uncertainty about the material limits of the work itself.

This project is supported by Partners In Art.

Cole Swanson, Monument (detail), insects, gold leaf, 2018. Image courtesy of the artist. Photo credit: Toni Hafkensheid.

The telephone melted into a pond of blue goo in Jasmine’s clammy palm after a caller’s obscene message. Glass, Unico® Stuffed Manzanilla Olives, Maynards Swedish Berries, White Wood Letters by Artminds®, 9” pigmented FlexFoam-iT! ® III, LEGO® found objects, 3D printed cookies, Yankee Candle® Home Sweet Home® Fragrance SpheresTM, Del Monte® Sliced Peaches Yellow Cling Peaches, President’s Choice® The Decadent Chocolate Chip Cookie, Bick’s® Dill Pickles, Smooth-Cast® 325, 326, Miscellaneous Objects, Aluminum Drain, Inkjet Print on Transparency, Con-Tact® Brand Creative CoveringTM Self-Adhesive Shelf and Drawer Liner, Granite, Snake Plywood, 12″ x 42” x 42”, 2018. Photo credit: Toni Hafkensheid.

Cole Swanson, Tuesday Night Special, Chicken skeleton (Mammoth BBQ Chicken), blood, 24 carat gold leaf, 2013. Photo credit: Toni Hafkensheid.

Broadbent Sisters. Desert Floor, Archival pen, acrylic on wood, 36” x 48”, 2017. Photo credit: Toni Hafkensheid.

Installation view with Xiaojing Yan and Broadbent Sisters. Exhibition documentation photographs at The Robert McLaughlin Gallery courtesy of Toni Hafkensheid.