ian tan gallery
CONTEMPORARY CANADIAN ART




 

avridWANGEN

EDUCATION:

      1988 – 99        Alberta College Of Art And Design; Fine Art Drawing Faculty 

       SOLO EXHIBITIONS:

2006                Ian Tan Gallery; Vancouver, BC
2005                Art Firm; Calgary, AB

 GROUP EXHIBITIONS:

2006                Ian Tan Gallery; Vancouver, BC
2006                Art Firm; Calgary, AB
2005                Ian Tan Gallery; Vancouver, BC
2005                Art Firm; Calgary, AB
2004                Art Firm; Calgary, AB
2003                West Pender Studios; Vancouver, BC
2002                Studio Ink; Calgary, AB

About the art:

"... the racy, adventurous feel of (the city) at night, and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye." 
The Great Gatsby  F. Scott Fitzgerald

The carnival is happening, everywhere, all the time, has entered every space and left us no quiet place to rest our eyes or wait in silence.  As more and more information is thrown at us, these points of intrigue, when beauty is everywhere, the extraordinary becomes commonplace and it is increasing difficult to differentiate between the sublime and the mundane, art and design, fact and fiction, between high art and pop culture.  When every corner is filled, context becomes impossible to grasp.  In this age of individualism, everyone is an expert and the democratization of all things tears down the structures we use to define our boundaries; this post modern need to desist labelling has us drowning in a deluge of unclassification.  It is all so weighted with meaning, with function and form, that it becomes meaningless, a perpetual re-run, as if we've seen it all before.  A clown in full regalia garners no more attention than a panhandler in Gas Town or a career woman walking through Kitsilano; everything screams for our attention,  And we are left... perpetually distracted, unfocused and overstimulated.
Wangen's work addresses this desensitization to the remarkable as he expresses the city without representing it; the constant hum, the need for movement, details and distraction, for every voice to be heard, in our newer faster lives.  Painting with oils and palette knives, Wangen achieves a detailed layered effect, static fields of minutiae that echo both the abstract expressionists and pointillism when reflecting the urban environment.  Wangen's work speaks of the glut of information we receive in our everyday lives, transforming it into a detailed mosaic of colour where every mark maintains its importance.  These intricately rendered marks attempt to bring the energy and passion of the large physical gesture into the infinitesimal; the macro into a microcosm.  Our new, ever more complicated landscape, cut back to its barest form, its details, its weight and the experience of living inside it, filled with shards of interest.

Avrid Wangen was born in Winnipeg and raised in Calgary where he studied in the Drawing Faculty at the Alberta College of Art and Design.  During his twenties he was involved with Studio Think and represented by Art Is Vital whom gave him his first solo exhibition.  He moved from Calgary to Vancouver in 2001 to pursue painting full time where his style evolved into these current highly detailed abstractions.  Unfortunately, a fire at his West Pender studio destroyed over a year of his work.  Since that serious setback he has responded by being part of The Anonymous Art Event in Calgary, November 2004, and most recently has a successful solo exhibition, a landmark event in his career and the first of this more advanced style, through Art Firm in Calgary, June 2005.

 
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Copyright 2005.  Ian Tan.