Acts of Will
Jennifer Carvalho, Samuelle Grande, Chantal Khoury, Oreka James, Minyoung Kim, Natasha Verbeke, Shoshana Walfish, Margaux Williamson
From January 11 to February 10, 2024
Galerie Nicolas Robert Toronto is pleased to launch its 2024 program with Acts of Will, a group exhibition of paintings by Jennifer Carvalho, Samuelle Grande, Oreka James, Chantal Khoury, Minyoung Kim, Natasha Verbeke, Shoshana Walfish, and Margaux Williamson.
The works in Acts of Will express a logic of intimacy that collapses subject and style to explore the emotive possibilities of paint. At times this is achieved ambiently, through entangled or blended brushstrokes that seem to move and breathe beyond the confines of their physicality. Elsewhere, the works hint at the recognizable, mining the everyday or drawing on art historical lineages as sources for encompassing the energy of a moment. When leaning more directly towards representation they do so by favouring the psychic over the technical. Acts of Will considers the relationship between painter and paint as a thing-in-itself, in which the role of the painter is to confront a proximation between what is seen and what is felt. Whether through melancholic, metaphysical, banal, or even comedic means, these eight painters embody a curious fusion of inner and outer worlds that highlights the way our most intimate thoughts are indifferent to fact.
