George Vergette: Darkness Visible
George Vergette The Birth of Light (Canyon) 2008 Detail
The Vancouver artist Georges Vergette is best known as a painter, and in this exhibition of recent work at Galerie Trois Points gathers some of the colourful resin and text works that have brought him attention. The deep-space resonance of paintings like Everything is Fine (which serves as a title for the exhibition) and Perspective #1—Flee make fine examples of how the artist uses the glassy depths of his resin surfaces to float faint, succinct survivor texts into the flow of colour (or its absence).
George Vergette Perspective #1—Flee 2008
The work makes for an ambiguous sense of affirmation that also shows up in Vergette’s sculptural works, small tabletop models of imaginary landscapes that manage to suggest some dark intrusions of nature into modernist urban spaces. The invitation for the Trois Points show also uses an image of a looming raven. It’s a detail from a sculpture called The Birth of Light (Canyon) that is part of a newer direction Vergette has been taking lately, but which continues his fascination with smouldering, shadowy light. While the sculpture is not in the Trois Points show, the invitation image sets the perfect tone for what is installed in the gallery. Think of this dark bird as the ideal viewer of Vergette’s noirish art. (372 Ste-Catherine O #520, Montreal QC)
George Vergette Study #16 2008
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