Return To Figurative

About

After years of the seemingly neverending popularity of abstraction, artwork depicting the human form is seeing a resurgence in the art world. Julia Campisi, Kristina Corre, Ariane Fairlie and Amanda Gorman illustrate this revival through their contrasting work.

In the series Famous Photographs and Working from the Desire Aesthetic, Toronto-based artist Julia Campisi reworks objectified images of women by cutting, dismantling and reforming them into distorted but recognizable figures. Campisi’s photo collages not only confront how images of women are depicted and dispersed, but also forces the viewer to readjust their gaze and understanding. Campisi’s large and smaller scale works are juxtaposed with her innovative sculptures, handmade vases with floral petals formed from further dismantled strips of images.

Kristina Corre shares work from her latest series Arrivants, informed by her Filipinx heritage, borrowing the term coined by Jin-me Yoon. Exploring her own diasporic identity in her work for the first time, the collages are inspired by the journey of immigrants from the Philippines (as in Balikbayans and Oceans Between Us), the ideals projected onto women in the country (Maria Carla is Nasty) and the colonialist history of the island (Mindoro). Corre plays with the proportions of both the figures and other found images in her work, leading to innovative perspectives.

Montréal-based Ariane Fairlie creates work self-described as “clothing portraiture”, exploring concepts of observation and hyperrealism. Fairlie’s work is unique as its subject matter, women’s intimate garments, are separated from its wearer, and yet depicted almost as if worn. This results in an intriguing middle area - “in the process of transforming the clothing from object to subject, Ariane's practice becomes one in empathy, a chance to explore and understand human characteristics and emotion through an inhuman form. The subject both there, and not there.” The exposed wood under her work mirrors the artist’s unmasking of the cultural identities declared by our clothing.

Amanda Gorman’s work targets her pain and fear in regards to her family’s struggle with Alzheimer’s disease. The artist’s exploration of time and memory, as well as her own personal worries about her own future, results in oil paintings employing a strong grasp of light and colour. The artist’s own consistent visualization of her brain separate from her body is depicted in Day Dreamer, while Slow Motion depicts superimposed hands as if stuck in slow motion, “as if being intoxicated by the disease that would destroy visual coordination.” 

While harnessing the subtlety of abstraction, the artists in Return to Figurative explore themes of the visual representation of the body (of their own or others), both internally and externally - marking the popular move back to representational artwork.

Text by Rose Ekins, Curator

//

BIOS:
Julia Campisi is a photo-based artist living in Toronto. She draws her inspiration from photo collections, history and analogue techniques. Her hand-made collages are derivative in nature and intends to question our visual culture. By using found images she creates a new expression onto the original. The gesture of extrapolation highlights the inconsequentiality of the original image. The work is meant to accomplish a transformative effect with the use of minimal interference of added material to the original. Julia first graduated from McMaster University with Honours in Political Science and has recently graduated with a B.F.A. from Ryerson University. Her photographs and collages have been exhibited, commissioned and acquired in both private and public spaces.

Kristina Corre is an analog collage artist based in Ottawa, Canada. Born in Manila and raised in Toronto, a lifetime of imagining new worlds led Corre to study architecture at Carleton University's Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism, where she graduated with her Master of Architecture degree in 2012. Beyond the history, theory, and practise of architecture, her education instilled the importance of narrative in image making, of meticulousness in her craft, and of making as a means to discovery. These paramount lessons are currently driving her explorations into handcut, found-object collage.

Ariane Fairlie is an artist in Montreal. Originally from Toronto, she received her BFA from Concordia University in 2014. Ariane evokes emotion and character through her 'Clothing Portraiture'. Concerned with concepts of observation and hyperrealism, she enjoys the inconsistencies that are the result of translating three dimensions into two; They create a beautiful and dynamic realism, different from what can be accomplished with a two-dimensional reference image.

Amanda Gorman is an Ottawa-based oil painter with curiosities of the human body— particularly with its ability to self destruct with the onset of disease. She represents figures in a realistic sense, focusing on skin tone to draw attention to the depth and complexities of the body, while typically leaving the backgrounds minimal. Amanda graduated from the University of Ottawa in 2014 with a Bachelors in Fine Arts and was recognized with the Edmund and Isabelle Ryan Painting Scholarship for painting excellence. Since then she has been practicing her skill by using various mediums, including watercolor and oil to emphasize her devotion to form and use of color. She has been concentrating on commissioned works, and a few local exhibitions in which she has partaken.