"COLLECTIVE" is an art exhibit hosted by art consultancy Mosquito Agency in Vancouver's McKinley Gallery, showcasing the exceptional work of Elsbeth Shaw, David Umemoto, Rhys Douglas Farrell, Kathy Ager, Jeff Hallbauer, Alex Caldwell, Tyler Toews, Calvin Dueck, and Luis Valdizon Hernandez.
Tickets available here.
THE COLLECTIVE
ELSBETH SHAW
Elsbeth paints, draws and creates using hundreds, often thousands of circles full of colour. A Circular Process With a passion born from Architectural precision and organic mark making, being inspired by Artists such as Yayoi Kusama Bridget Riley and Anni Albers, Elsbeth Shaw has created her own unique and vibrant narrative. Early works on paper with chalk led her on a path of exploration with various methods and mediums, looping back to her initial love of Works on Paper.
DAVID UMEMOTO
The concrete works of David Umemoto stand as studies about volume. At the juncture of sculpture and architecture, these miniature pieces evoke temporary buildings or monuments standing on far-away lands. The walls rising towards nowhere, the curves running into ceilings, and the staircases leading into the void evoke remnants of modern cities having survived a cataclysm or fragments of Babylonian cities.
RHYS DOUGLAS FARRELL
Rhys Douglas Farrell is an emerging artist living and working in Calgary, Alberta. Farrell is a graduate from Alberta University of the Arts where he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts with Distinction (Drawing and Painting). His work is a combination of beautiful colour combinations, complex patterns and geometric shapes. Currently Farrell is represented by the Herringer Kiss Gallery in Calgary, Alberta and TAKSU Gallery in Singapore. Farrell's work has been aggressively collected by corporate and private collectors alike and he has participated in a number of international residencies. His larger public works can be found in several countries around the world including Bosnia, Canada, Croatia, Malaysia, Sicily and Spain. Farrell was awarded the Alumni Horizon Award from AUArts highlighting his progress since graduating.
KATHY AGER
Ager creates detailed still lifes that feel simultaneously Baroque and acerbically modern. Inspired by the 17th-Century Golden Age of Dutch and Spanish painting, her imagery uses historical visual rhetoric to deliver intensely personal and emotively charged themes.
The seductive darkness with which Ager reveals universal human longings is both disarming and consuming. Broken hearts are offered up as organs in a bowl, skeletal memento mori abound, and dating feels about as abject in the modern world as butchery; books are stacked with suggestive spines, and flowers wither while fruit threatens to decay. The abattoir is never far from the transcendent ambitions of classical statuary in Ager’s world, while beauty is embroiled in the vulnerability of intimacy and self-exposure.
JEFF HALLBAUER
Jeff Hallbauer is an interdisciplinary painter based on unceded territory of the xwməθkwəyə̓ m, Sḵwxwú7mesh, and ̱Sel ̓ílwitulh Nations. Hallbauer graduated fr ̓ om Emily Carr University in 2009. He has exhibited locally and abroad. Some notable exhibitions include “Fruits” at Chernoff Fine Art and “Towards a Fictional History of Colour” at the Burrard Art Foundation. Last summer, he participated in the Queer Arts Festival as part of a Avram Finkelstein flash collective experiment in political art-making, which showed at the Grunt Gallery community art screen. He also recently collaborated with Swiss artist Dawn Nilo’s performance Performing Negotiations as part of the 2020 Swiss Art Awards.
ALEX CALDWELL
Alexander Caldwell’s sculptures are immaculate in execution and finish, embracing curves and right angles, round volumes and flat planes where minimalism meets pop art. Squares, spheres, hemispheres and cylinders are the building blocks of his formal vocabulary. Each sculpture is painted a single bright colour or coated with a meticulous metal finish. Caldwell works mostly with found materials, although he will cast elements he wants to repeat. He employs colour to remove shape as far as possible from its origins in functional objects – pipe in various diameters, pipe elbows, metal hemispheres - and industrial materials – steel, stainless steel and aluminum. The applied colour is either automotive or oilfield paint that, along with a little filler, hides the joins and welds under the flawless skin of a surface of colour that is impervious to weather.
TYLER TOEWS
Toews works across a variety of mediums, including painting, collage, silkscreen, linocuts, and installations. He creates large and small-scale paintings, combining abstract expressionist and gestural painting styles. His paintings speak their own unique language and form dynamic compositions of bold colours, geometric shapes, architectural elements, portraits, and loose hints of representation. With a lively imagination and vivid visions; social issue themes and emotions combined with individuals’ energies and auras are translated from the artist’s subconscious mind onto his canvases with energetic and articulate brushstrokes.
CALVIN DUECK
Playing with dimension, form and layering, Calvin Dueck uses the relatively menial material of childhood play, LEGO pieces, to create truly inspiring and beautiful works of art. Pieces join and shapes are created, transforming into an intricate, almost woven-like pattern in some cases, and in others, almost fabric-like shapes. Each piece creates a harmonious feeling, embodying movement that is unique—particularly as light touches the pieces and opens a fresh, unseen angle of appreciation.
LUIS VALDIZON HERNANDEZ
Photographer and multi-faceted creative, Luis Valdizon, was born in El Salvador and immigrated to the harsh elements of Winnipeg, Canada with his family shortly after due to civil unrest within the country. During visits to his country of origin he would encounter a world rich in texture, greenery and culture that was not so prevalent in his newfound home. These early memories began to shape and inform his journalistic point of view, as would his ever-growing love of art, design, and cinema. With an appreciation for both the humble and exquisite, he looks to evoke a feeling of beauty, poetry and mystery for his audience and collectors. Luis now resides in Vancouver, Canada.
MOSQUITO AGENCY
Mosquito Agency is passionate about introducing international artists to the Canadian market. Our events bring together a vibrant community around the celebration of the arts. Founder Jeannie McKinley—a native of Seoul, South Korea—is an artist and designer herself and brings her energy and passion for discovering new artists to every event. Mosquito Agency serves as the art consultancy studio of McKinley Studios and is available for consultation and commissions.