City Lights v2

Posted November 17, 2012 by KyleClements

After the successful opening of my debut show, City Lights, at Moore Gallery in Toronto, I was invited to show work at the 13th Street Winery in St. Catherines, Ontario. Although this show shares the same title as my last show at Moore, and much of the same work was on display, I wanted this show to be more eclectic. I lifted my self-imposed rule of only selecting work based on photos from time lapse sequences, and selected paintings that I thought worked well together visually with the work from the last show.

The only camera I had with me during this opening was the one in my cellphone, so the image quality isn’t up to par. But grainy blurry greenish shots are better than nothing!

Installation shot of original artworks by Kyle Clements
Installation shot.

Installation shot of original artworks by Kyle Clements
These three paintings were intended to be sneak peek at where I was going for my next show, “Concrete and Glass”. But they were the first to sell, and I ended up having to do a lot more work to fill the gallery for my next gallery show.

Installation shot of original artworks by Kyle Clements
Another angle of the set of three paintings that were the precursor to “Concrete and Glass”.

City Lights

Posted June 7, 2012 by KyleClements

This show was the first time that I’ve had enough of an established body of work that I wasn’t rushing around at the last minute, fighting to crank out enough work to display. For this show, I was able to pick a theme, set out my entire body of work, stand back, and pick out a number of pieces that fit that theme. In this case, visual abundance was the focus – the density of images we come across in our daily lives from advertisements and videos to photos on social media, was something I was thinking about.

I selected paintings that were based on collages of images taken from time-lapse photography sequences, where I was literally choosing one or two images from thousands of possibilities and combining them into digital collages emphasizing speed, abundance, and visual density.

Installation shot.

electrified v2.0

Posted November 30, 2006 by KyleClements

After my experience with Electrified, I wanted to keep the ball rolling, so I pulled this apartment show together. I was interested in taking a more minimalist approach this time around. I simplified my paintings by zooming in on small sections of other paintings, and using that as the basis for the next painting. My palette moved away from the primaries, and focused towards the tertiaries. Registration errors were made more prominent. I played around with the viscosity of the paint; going from thin and watery to thick like a drywall paste. I introduced pearlescent pigments. I wanted to see how far I could push this Urban Landscapes series, what would work, and what would not, and a non-commercial apartment showing was a great opportunity to do just that, and solicit feedback from my friends and peers.

Urban Landscape, 16″ x 16″, acrylic on canvas, 2006.

Urban Landscape, 16″ x 20″, acrylic on canvas, 2006.

Urban Landscape 1, 44″ x 56″ (approx), acrylic on canvas, 2006.

Urban Landscape 2, 44″ x 54″ (approx), acrylic on canvas, 2006.

Urban Landscape 3, 42″ x 52″, acrylic on canvas, 2006.

The apartment, where the show was held.

Electrified

Posted November 10, 2006 by KyleClements

Electrified was my first experience working with a curator. Kelsie Parsons did a wonderful job taking care of everything. I just had to make the art and show up. It was great! Kelsie also worked some media magic as far as advertising is concerned. This show was going on at the same time as the Toronto International Art Fair yet when googling “Toronto art”, information about my show came up first.

Urban Landscape, 18″ x 24″, encaustic on canvas, 2006.

Urban Landscape 1, 44″ x 56″ (approx), acrylic on canvas, 2006.

Urban Landscape 3, 42″ x 52″, acrylic on canvas, 2006.

It Happened Here: 2006 OCAD Graduate Show

Posted May 5, 2006 by KyleClements

It Happened Here was the title of the 2006 Ontario College of Art and Design Graduate show. The thesis program at OCAD really drove in the importance of having a clear focus and presenting a cohesive body of work. I don’t think I was quite ready for this. After making three paintings that turned out just as I wanted them, I started experimenting again. I made two that tried to incorporate some techniques from my older paintings, but those techniques really didn’t need to be there. In retrospect, I was just showing off. I was telling the audience, “Hey, I know some fancy glazing techniques, too! Look! Please ignore how out-of-place the technique might be…”

The Urban Landscapes series has been my primary focus ever since this show. It’s hard to explain through words, but painting this way just feels right.

Urban Landscape 1, 44″ x 56″ (approx), acrylic on canvas, 2006.

Urban Landscape 2, 44″ x 54″ (approx), acrylic on canvas, 2006.

Urban Landscape 3, 42″ x 52″, acrylic on canvas, 2006.

Urban Landscape 4, 44″ x 54″ (approx), acrylic on canvas, 2006.

Urban Landscape 5, 44″ x 55″ (approx), acrylic on canvas, 2006. SOLD

Urban Landscapes:

2006 Artist Statement

I see my recent art as a dialogue between my knowledge of art history and my experience with the images being made today. The images of today often fit into the digital aesthetic. They remind me of a buzz, of being completely overwhelmed by the amount of stimuli coming at me.

I enjoy looking at a lot of the art that came out of the Modern era. Abstract Expressionism in particular is a favourite of mine. I go into galleries and museums to spend time with several pieces that I really like.

I also enjoy looking at images that come out of our era. Subway ads, billboards, posters, magazine layouts, internet pop ups, photo blogs, screen shots from streaming videos, and digital camera preview screens. Images from these new mediums are far more prevalent in my life than what I see inside a gallery. I briefly glance at these images when I am passing by, and I notice that they often share a certain aesthetic, something not seen in the works of the past. I find this new aesthetic to be very interesting.

It is my goal to understand and capture this new aesthetic in my paintings. I brush, scrape, and squeeze acrylic onto the canvas, using what I see around me to inform my decisions as I build my paintings.

Kyle Clements

Victoria Fenninger and Kyle Clements

Posted March 15, 2006 by KyleClements

Victoria Fenninger looks at one of my encaustic paintings.

Encaustic on canvas. When working with texture, it is hard to avoid encaustic, it is a wonderful medium.

The Texture Series I had been working on let me towards appreciating the value of unique supports for a painting. For a while, I would head down to a wood shop and raid the scrap bin, looking for random chunks of wood to assemble into interesting shapes to coat with globs of paint.

By the end of this series, I was struggling to keep pure textures interesting, leading me to really work the surfaces. Sometimes, I would scrape the wax down o a flat surface. Other times, I would brush paint over the same area hundreds of time, building up interesting textures.

This painting doesn’t fit with the rest of the show, to be perfectly honest, it was thrown in as a space filler. Y.O. Media Gallery had a very large front window, and we liked to put something big close to that window, to draw people into the gallery. I was also still fairly young at the time, and the importance of having a strong focus and cohesive body of work in a show hadn’t sunk in yet. I was still throwing together whatever I had been working on at the time. I could see that there was something special in this piece, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I had several big ones to chose from, but something had me sort through the stack and pick this one. Little did I know that this painting would mark a turning point in my artistic development.

Event Documentation

Three Point Turn

Posted October 13, 2005 by KyleClements

Three Point Turn was held in OCAD’s Transit Space Gallery, and featured artist’s Brad Blucher, Kyle Clements, and Mark Zydaniuk.

I was still working on my Texture series at this time, including some oil/alkyd paintings that I had been working on for several years, building up countless layers of transparent paint. This labour-intensive technique creates a glowing pearlescent effect when the painting is viewed under the right lighting conditions. Unfortunately, Transit Space didn’t provide those lighting conditions, but it was still nice to have my work on display in Toronto

I was also working with acrylic at this time. Acrylic doesn’t have the same transparency as oil, so the glazing technique wasn’t nearly as impressive. I threw in some pearlescent pigments, and had a stronger pearl effect after 15 minutes than the oil paintings had after two years of work!

Installation Pictures

The plinth in the centre of the space presented a CD player, which contained Brad Blucher’s sound piece. You would not believe how much use Bard has gotten out of that plinth. He still has it to this day, and its been sanded and repainted so many times, it looks better today than it did when it was first constructed. Four of Mark Zydaniuk’s paintings can be seen in the background, along with one of mine on the right.

Brad Blucher takes a close look at one of my paintings. Brad, I miss the awesome hair!

The Kyle and Brad Show II: with Mark

Posted June 22, 2005 by KyleClements

Geometric Abstraction, 12″ X 12″ X 3″, Oil and Encaustic on Canvas, 2005.

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Geometric Abstraction, 12″ X 12″ X 3″, Oil and Encaustic on Canvas, 2005.

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Geometric Abstraction, 12″ X 12″ X 3″, Oil and Encaustic on Canvas, 2005.

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Geometric Abstraction, 12″ X 12″ X 3″, Acrylic on Canvas, 2005.

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Geometric Abstraction, 12″ X 12″ X 3″, Acrylic on Canvas, 2005.

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Geometric Abstraction, 12″ X 12″ X 3″, Acrylic on Canvas, 2005.

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Texture Series, 8″ X 10″, Acrylic on Canvas, 2005.

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Texture Series, 24″ X 24″, Acrylic on Canvas, 2005.

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Texture Series, Acrylic on Oak Pannel, 2005.

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Texture Series, 16″ X 16″, Oil and Encaustic on Canvas, 2005. SOLD

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Texture Series, Oil and Encaustic on Board, 2005.

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Texture Series, 16″ X 16″, Oil and Encaustic on Board, 2005.

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Event Photos

Collin spent quite a while in that corner, looking at every detail of my paintings.

This art show occurred while I was in the midst of my Texture Series. which explored surface quality and unconventional paint application techniques. Warm/cool, transparency/opacity and gloss/matte were the primary focus, rather than form or composition. Unfortunately, several of these traits, especially the gloss/matte contrast, cannot be accurately recreated in a photograph. The series is more successful in-person.

John Blaise and Brad Blucher, with Victoria Fenninger’s paintings in the background.

Heather Phillips, Kyle Clements, Victoria Fenninger, and Brad Blucher

Heather Phillips, Kyle Clements, Brad Blucher’s back, and John Blaise

Get Bent Days of Yore

Posted April 22, 2005 by KyleClements

We didn’t pick the title for this show. The owner of Y.O. Media Gallery thought that our art had an edgy, contemporary look, and he wanted to really play it up. He wanted our art to be a big kick-in-the-pants to the traditional art that was so common in our town. He insisted on a dramatic show title. We couldn’t really think of anything, and Tim started firing off suggestions at us. Since we all had a good sense of humour, we didn’t shoot this one down.

Biomorphic Forms, 54″ X 108″ Acrylic on canvas, 2005.

Cubist Deconstruction of a face (version 3), 46″ X 46″ acrylic on canvas, 2005.

Texture Series, 16″ X 16″ acrylic and encaustic on canvas, 2005.

Scrape Painting, 9″ X 12″ acrylic on masonite, 2005.

Texture Series, 16″ X 16″ acrylic and encaustic on canvas, 2005.

Kyle Clements, standing in front of the second largest painting he’s made to date.

Junk_etc: An Exhibition of Contemporary Art by Acta Victoria

Posted January 1, 2005 by KyleClements

Getting myself into this show was perhaps the strangest and most serendipitous experience I’ve had. Someone was curating an art show at the University of Toronto. She ventured down to OCAD in search of artists. Not knowing the layout of the building, she got lost wandered through the Design departments, and didn’t come across any artists. She had just left the building, when Brad caught her attention. At the time, Brad had some nice dreads, which let her know he wasn’t a practical designer type person. “With hair like that”, she thought, “he must be an artist.” After a few seconds of chit-chat, Brad had charmed his way into our very first Toronto show.

Cubist Deconstruction of a Face (version 2), 46″ X 52″, acrylic on canvas, 2005.

Lego, 46″ X 56″, acrylic on canvas, 2004.

Biomorphic Forms, 46″ X 46″, Acrylic on canvas, 2004.

My parents are supporting me at my first Toronto art show. A group of people admiring my work.

Blaze and Brad Blucher talking about their art.

Kyle Clements and Blaze sip coffee and discuss art.

Untitled Show

Posted July 5, 2004 by KyleClements

Artists Kyle Clements, Heather Phillips, Victoria Fenninger, Brad Blucher, and gallery owner Tim.

The four of us had many shows together at Y.O. Media gallery in Sutton over a number of years. The experience gained from these early shows turned out to be very helpful years later. Very few young artists stick with it, but the four of us are still very much involved in the art world.

Biomorphic forms, 46″ X 46″, acrylic on canvas, 2004

Biomorphic forms, 42″ X 52″, acrylic on canvas, 2004