duplicate

Paul MacIntyre
Sasha Opeiko
Matt Trahan

Exhibition organized by Matt Trahan

April 10 to May 16, 2015

duplicate features the work of three artists and friends who unbeknownst to each other, have recently made work based on the meticulous hand-wrought reproduction of existing surfaces, giving rise to a sort of process-based visual alchemy.

Paul MacIntyre has laboriously repainted the iconic blue markings of a deck of Bicycle playing cards red, tracing the mechanically produced markings with thousands of brushstrokes. Sasha Opeiko approaches the memetic and sculptural possibilities inherent in the reproduction of natural substances; the perimeters between what is and is not real—in this case wood and stone. Matt Trahan considers the aesthetic possibilities of security patterns found inside envelopes. This covert and unexpected visual information is abstracted and exploded from its small scale mechanical mass production after fastidious and durational registration of the original designs.

Paul MacIntyre is a current MFA candidate at the University of Guelph. He completed his BFA at the University of Victoria in 2012 before spending a brief period in Berlin. His work in drawing and painting combines strict self-imposed limitations with a fetishization of the inescapable imperfections associated with repetitive labour; his research interests can be summed up as a kind of systematic cartography. His work has been exhibited at the University of Guelph and the Fifty Fifty Arts Collective in Victoria.

Sasha Opeiko sustains a solo and collaborative artistic practice in Windsor ON, with a maintained interest in critical theory. Focusing on topics of ideological entrapment, objects, materiality and perception, she works in a variety of media including painting, drawing, video, installation and sculpture. Sasha received a BFA in Visual Arts from the University of Windsor in 2009, followed by a MFA in Visual Arts from the University of Victoria in 2012. Her work has most recently been exhibited at Artcite Inc. (Windsor ON), Thames Art Gallery (Chatham ON) and Judith & Norman Alix Art Gallery (Sarnia ON). Her recent collaborative projects include Third Line (with Martin Stevens, International Zizek Studies Conference 2014, Cincinnati OH) and the Meta-Etcetera Hovercraft 1.0 (with Megan Press, part of Artcite Inc.’s Precariat, Windsor ON).

Matt Trahan is an artist currently living in Victoria, BC where he teaches drawing and contemporary art theory at the University of Victoria. He holds a BFA from the University of Western Ontario (2009) with an additional major in philosophy and an MFA from the University of Victoria (2012). His work examines the material possibilities of drawing by challenging some of its most fundamental precepts, including the relationship between positive and negative space, figure and ground and the discreteness of line. His work has been shown primarily in BC and Ontario and he has upcoming shows at Deluge Contemporary Art in Victoria and Wil Aballe Art Projects in Vancouver.