Sasha Pierce at Zalucky Contemporary

Artist: Sasha Pierce

Exhibition title: Shippo

Venue: Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto, Canada

Date: September 10 – October 15, 2022

Photography: Toni Hafkenscheid / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Zalucky Contemporary

Zalucky Contemporary is proud to present Shippo, a solo exhibition by Toronto-based artist Sasha Pierce. In this latest series involving paintings and watercolour drawings on paper, the artist explores new horizons through the history of complex geometric designs. For Pierce, the starting point is Wagara—a system of traditional Japanese patterns that date back to the 8th century. While most Wagara designs are derived from nature, the enjoined circles of the “Shippo” pattern are based on Buddhist principles of interconnection and infinite possibility. Pierce imbues this historic pattern with her own colour palette and trademark style of tightly woven lines that radiate from the centre. In this way, each composition seems to recede into some distant point in space and time, recalling—uncannily—the incredible images of galaxy clusters recently delivered by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. From those expansive views of outer space, to the delicate precision of the “Shippo” patterns, Pierce’s works evoke scales both minute and galactic.

Sasha Pierce received her Bachelor of Arts Degree, Honors, at the University of Guelph, Ontario in 1997 and a Master of Fine Arts Degree, at the University of Waterloo, Ontario in 2004, where she was awarded the Sylvia Knight Graduate Award in Fine Arts. Pierce has had solo exhibitions at Jessica Bradley Gallery, Toronto, Ontario; ACME, Los Angeles, California; and CTRL Gallery, Houston, Texas, among others. Pierce has also been in numerous group exhibitions at Mercer Union, Toronto; Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina, Saskatchewan; II, Ballhaus Ost, Berlin, Germany; Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto, Ontario; and the University of Waterloo Art Gallery, Waterloo, Canada. In 2009 Pierce was awarded honorable mention in the Eleventh Annual RBC Canadian Painting Competition. Her works are in the permanent collections of the Doris McCarthy Gallery, University of Toronto Scarborough; The Donovan Collection, University of Toronto; Collection of the Canada Council Art Bank; RBC Collection; BMO Collection; the TD Collection (Canada) and the Cleveland Clinic art collection (United States). She is represented by Richard Heller Gallery, Santa Monica, USA.

The artist would like to acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council.