Artist: Ezra Gray
Exhibition title: Brown Space
Venue: Almanac Inn, Turin, Italy
Date: February 18 – March 24, 2017
Photography: Sebastiano Pellion, all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Almanac Inn, London/Turin
Almanac Inn is thrilled to present Brown Space, a solo exhibition by Canadian artist Ezra Gray.
Intertwined and dispersed fragments define disavowed and displaced meanings in a series of vying intensities. Set as a display of differences, a discourse is developed with the pinch and the ouch. A transportation demarks relationships between a given stimulus and its emotional response. Regulated by desire, the tension between bodies invents architectures, narratives, connections, bridges, abysses, ways to different realities. A persistent imagery materializes, finding unexpected conclusions through fracturings and mismatches. Their presence opens our gaze to a romantic reverie. A fragmentary form of representation portrays ruins of modernity and collective subconscious. Cuts between scale, temporal dislocations and mutable characters frame a condition of becoming — timeless imagery connected to the present moment. A flow from social/collective imaginary to individual desire results in the grotesque and the sentimental — a romance of alterities and the materialization of promiscuous possibilities, shifting, dissonant realities. Their hybrid identities, flexible semiotic hierarchies and plural exchanges through associations define a surreal scenario redirecting meanings toward new ends — willing to designate molten or shifting parts, a means of asserting while also giving the slip. Schizophrenic desire, idiosyncrasy and isolations define this movement built through contradictions as the title of the show — Beckett would say you would find yourself in a brown space when you’re alone but you feel that you have company.
Ezra Gray, Swiss Knife, 2017, oil on canvas, 90x70cm
Ezra Gray, Untitled, 2017, oil on canvas, 90x70cm
Ezra Gray, Fugitive Thoughts, 2016, oil on canvas, 90x70cm
Ezra Gray, Hoover Dam from Above, 2016, oil on canvas, 90x70cm
