Back to Search
With the weather getting cooler, you might be looking for something indoors to do over the next several weeks. Visit Glenhyrst Art Gallery of Brant and view their latest exhibition by Brantford artist, Paul Kneale.
Influenced by the histories of scanography and zerography, Kneale uses inexpensive flatbed scanners to produce large scale scanner paintings. His approach simultaneously breaks from the canon of Modernist abstraction while leading contemporary painting in new directions.
Using an unpredictable and laborious process, Kneale builds layers of low and high-resolution scans with the machine’s lid open and nothing resting in the copy bed. What is captured in the scanner are traces of ambient light contained in the ether of the artists’ studio that, while gathered together, forge a complete image.
These “impressions,” as he describes them, have found their way into previous works and will again be utilized in the future, signaling a recycling of visual archetypes into new compositions. Moreover, Kneale’s scanner paintings stretch the expanses of space-time by overlaying quick low-res scans over slow high-res scans so that particular moments and atmospheres are documented. Not only does this allow viewers to read Kneale’s work as paintings, scans, or photography, but it also opens their interpretation to a form of experimental cinema.
Kneale questions how the Information Age and cyberspace have undermined and dehumanized intimate and collective relationships. To counteract this, his impressions are approached as layers of flesh that reintroduce human elements into the cold frame of the digital image.
About the Artist
Paul Kneale was born in Brantford, Ontario in 1986. He received a BA in Visual Studies and Art History from the University of Toronto and an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art (London, UK) in 2011. His work has been shown at galleries and museums across Canada, the United States, and Europe, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Boca Raton Museum, Centre Pompidou Metz, and the Thetis Gardens in Venice, Italy. He has taught art studio at the Zurich University of Arts and has contributed theoretical articles to Frieze and Spike magazines. In 2019, Kneale unveiled Flat Earth Visa, a site-specific installation for the hillscape surrounding the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Torino, Italy. His work resides in several public and private art collections globally. Kneale lives and works in Brantford, Ontario.
The Exhibit will be on display at Glenhyrst Art Gallery of Brant, 20 Ava Rd. Brantford, Ontario from October 3 to November 29, 2020.
Admission to the gallery is free. COVID-19 policies regarding masks and limited number of patrons are in affect. All are welcome.
Subscribe to Blog