ChPl III - 34: Dark Facade, acrylic on canvas, 53 x 57 in, $2640
Gerald Penry | Graphic Standards and Architectural Anomalies
June 16 - July 8
Reception: Saturday, June 17 @ 3 - 5 pm
Artist Talk: June 17 @ 3:30 pm
Please RSVP your attendance to responses@wallspacegallery.ca
Wall Space Gallery is proud to debut the paintings of Gerald Penry. In this exhibition Penry will be presenting continuations of his Chimerical Places and Plane Geometry series. Through an intricate process of layered acrylic paint, Penry weaves images of impossible architectural structures. Freed from the laws of physics, his constructions open an imaginative world of speculation and possibility.
ChPl III - 29 - Chimerical Places Three, acrylic on canvas, 18 x 23 in, $990
"Although I have several series to which I return as I am compelled, my most enduring has been Chimerical Places...Chimerical Places Three, the third and current manifestation of these sketches, are the product of explorations in paint of the aesthetics of architectural drawing; playing with ambiguities of commingling systems of mechanical representation while developing painterly equivalents of pencil field rendering techniques."
- Gerald Penry
ChPl III - 30 - Chimerical Places Three, acrylic on canvas, 18 x 23 in, $990
Penry's background in architectural drafting informs his current painting practice from a technical and creative standpoint. Much like architectural drawings, Penry's build up of forms and colours gradually emerges from the meticulous application of lines. He finds intrigue in the laborious application of acrylic paint in thread like strokes that visually intertwine with one another, slowly shimmering with the illusion of three-dimensionality.
Penry never allows his fantasy architectural planes to fully break from their drawing roots. They remain keenly based in two-dimensionality. It's the humming tension between flatness and form that makes his paintings so visually enticing. Penry is a master of precarious moments that push structures forward or allow them to collapse.
Gerald Penry studied fine arts for six years at The University of British Columbia, earning a BFA in 1995 and MFA in 1997 and receiving the Florence Muriel Smeltzer Scholarship for Painting in 1994. This period of intense creative training was a compatible interruption within a career in architecture -- about ten years as a draftsman aspiring to be an architect before and another fifteen years as an artist content with designing, sketching, rendering, detailing, and model making after. Penry highlights his decade of employment with Nick Milkovich Architects Inc. (1995 – 2005) in association with preeminent Canadian architect Arthur Erickson as formative. At that exceptional firm – a truly educational studio environment – he learned a uniquely sensitive approach to design and refined the skill of crafting beautiful architectural drawings. Penry applied his fine arts sensibilities to his work in architecture; informing his creative process and production.