Tristram Lansdowne
Eyewitness

May 26 to July 3, 2021

Galerie Nicolas Robert is proud to present Eyewitness, Tristram Lansdowne's second solo exhibition with the gallery. In a new series of large-scale, rigorously executed watercolours, Lansdowne presents views of eerily vacant news broadcasting sets. As with his previous body of work that focused on the global placelessness and homogeneity of contemporary luxury home design, Lansdowne considers the newsroom as a non-site: both intrinsically local and globally placeless, it is a windowless stage upon which our fears and desires take root and the world is flattened into a consumable spectacle. Through a range of pictorial interventions Lansdowne examines how this flattening is both articulated and counteracted by the elaborate framing, geometric flourishes, and layered illusionism of these spaces. As if suddenly abandoned and left to their own devices, the sweeping lightboxes glow, storm systems percolate on large backdrop screens and the veneer surfaces of the news anchors’ desks glimmer like digital altars, inviting us to contemplate how their architectural form embodies their function as conduits of power and information. 

Born in Victoria (BC), Tristram Lansdowne lives and works in Toronto (ON). He holds an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (2016) and a BFA from the Ontario College of Art & Design (2007). His work has been exhibited in numerous museums and galleries across North America and in the UK, including at the Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery, Bonington Gallery - Nottingham Trent University, and the Mendel Art Gallery. His work is in numerous public and corporate collections in Canada and the US, including the National Gallery of Canada, the TD Bank Collection, the Royal Bank of Canada Collection, the Bank of Montreal Collection, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center.