Mark Adair & Elizabeth Babyn @ Loop Gallery September 27, 2008

Loop Gallery is pleased to announce exhibitions by Loop Gallery members Mark Adair entitled Last Garden and Elizabeth Babyn entitled Playing Off the Grid.

Mark Adair is a Toronto artist who both does charcoal works on paper and makes sculpture. His work was recently featured in the Patrick Jenkins documentary, Death Is In Trouble Now, currently airing on BRAVO! Television, which was also the basis for a 25-year retrospective of Adair's work mounted last year at Brock University's Rodman Hall Arts Centre. Adair is a graduate of York University, Toronto (BFA 1979) and the University of Victoria (MFA 1982). He is a founding member of the Torontoniensis Collective with whom he exhibited since the mid 1990's. He has exhibited with Loop since 2004.

Adair’s new work, Last Garden, includes large charcoal drawings and the sculpture 21st Century Reliquary which borrows its complex form and function from the sacred reliquary sculptures of the Middle Ages. These new works continue Adair's effort to come to grips with the ongoing destruction of the natural world and our complex and violent relationship with Knowledge.

Playing Off the Grid continues Elizabeth Babyn’s practice of creating large gestural non-objective paintings that incorporate elements of process and chance. Babyn’s method harnesses the spontaneously occurring grid of drip marks which create the final skeletal framework of each painting. Intrigued by the visually unnerving experience of 1960’s Op art, Babyn juxtaposes various optic constructs with her own method of acrylic painting. Working intuitively, her process involves under-painting with gesso various grid and optic designs on raw canvas, followed by gestural brushwork and further paint applications that either hide or reveal aspects of the under-painted design. The results are an exploration of spontaneous and considered grid formations on canvas.

Originally from the Eastern Townships in Quebec, Babyn now resides with her family in Caledon, Ontario. After years of working as a registered nurse, Babyn obtained her BFA with honours in Drawing and Painting at the Ontario College of Art & Design. She teaches art at King's College in Caledon and at her studio in Bolton, just north of Toronto. Babyn has been a member of Loop Gallery since 2003. She has also exhibited work at Propeller Centre for the Visual Arts, Spin Gallery, The Whitney Gallery, The Lyndia Terre Gallery, SGI, McMichael Gallery, The Caledon East Studio Tour and surrounding area.

September 27 – October 19, 2008
Reception: Saturday, September 27, 2008, 2-5 PM

Gallery Hours: Wed - Sat 1 to 5 pm, and Sun 1 to 4pm. Artist is in attendance on Sundays.

Official Website: http://www.loopgallery.ca