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Colin Carney & Ian McLean - Here, Then and There

Friday, November 4, 2011 to Saturday, December 10, 2011

Opening reception: Friday, November 4, 7:00pm


Guelph-based artist Colin Carney is interested in time and perception. "Then And There" is a recent series of multi-layered digital photographs which are derived from an annual retreat in rural Ontario. He says that the layering in this work helps to both depict his authentic experience and interrupt the specifics of location and circumstance. While describing the quiet and the stillness, Carney's work is also concerned with the interaction of the viewer's memory and the subject. A collection of pauses, "Then And There" is a series of work which both tells a story and asks for one at once. Carney gratefully acknowledges the support of the OAC exhibition assistance program for their support of this exhibition.



Ian McLean is interested in imagery that explores the relationship between social and natural worlds. His paintings often reveal efforts to contain, control, manipulate, or avoid circumstances of nature as evidenced in highly groomed and domesticated environments reflecting a deep-seated desire for comfort or beauty or distraction. The residential environments in his paintings are sometimes real and sometimes imagined, enhancing discrepancies between setting and mood through an emphasis on ornamentation. The exaggeration of certain decorative elements of comfort is intended to both lure viewers into familiar environments and unsettle them once they are there. Efforts to keep elements of dissolution or entropy at bay are evident in these settings. The success of such efforts is thereby challenged. Ian McLean was born in Sarnia, Ontario and studied at the University of Guelph. His work has been exhibited extensively and is in several private and corporate collections across Canada. He lives in Bright’s Grove and is represented in Toronto by Loop Gallery and Gallery Moos.



Images: left - Delay (detail), Colin Carney, archival digital print, 45 x 30″, 2010 right - Fuller, Ian McLean, oil on canvas, 40" x 30", 2011

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