shawn serfas · this kind of wilderness
vernon public art gallery vernon, british columbia canada www.vernonpublicartgallery.com
shawn serfas this kind of wilderness
shawn serfas this kind of wilderness Vernon Public Art Gallery July 29 - September 29, 2021
Vernon Public Art Gallery 3228 - 31st Avenue, Vernon BC, V1T 2H3 www.vernonpublicartgallery.com 250.545.3173
Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Vernon Public Art Gallery 3228 - 31st Avenue, Vernon, British Columbia, V1T 2H3, Canada July 29 - September 29, 2021 Production: Vernon Public Art Gallery Editor: Lubos Culen Layout and graphic design: Vernon Public Art Gallery Copy editing: Kelsie Balehowsky Front and back cover: Choiceland, 2021, acrylic on canvas, 96 x 78 x 5 inches Photo credit: Shawn Serfas Printing: Get Colour Copies, Vernon, British Columbia, Canada ISBN 978-1-927407-63-9 Copyright © 2021 Vernon Public Art Gallery All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the Vernon Public Art Gallery. Requests for permission to use these images should be addressed in writing to the Vernon Public Art Gallery, 3228 31st Avenue, Vernon BC, V1T 2H3, Canada. Telephone: 250.545.3173 Facsimile: 250.545.9096 Website: www.vernonpublicartgallery.com The Vernon Public Art Gallery is a registered not-for-profit society. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Greater Vernon Advisory Committee/RDNO, the Province of BC’s Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch, British Columbia Arts Council, the Government of Canada, corporate donors, sponsors, general donations and memberships. Charitable Organization # 108113358RR.
This exhibition is sponsored in part by:
table of CONTENTS
7
Executive Director’s Foreword · Dauna Kennedy
9
This Kind of Wilderness: Introduction · Lubos Culen
13
Shawn Serfas: In the Search of Choiceland · Derek J. J. Knight
20
Visceral Stories, Germinating Landscapes · Catherine Parayre
24
Histoires Viscérales, Paysages en Germination · Catherine Parayre
28
Artist Statement · Shawn Serfas
31
Images of Works In The Exhibition
52
Selected Biography · Shawn Serfas
5
The Rest of Us (detail), 2020, acrylic on canvas, 96 x 78 x 5 inches
executive director’s Foreword
It is a pleasure to welcome back Shawn Serfas who previously, in 2008, exhibited his work at the Vernon Public Art Gallery during his time as art lecturer and educator at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus (UBCO). Since that time, Serfas relocated to St Catherines and taught at Brock University in the position of Associate Professor. Serfas has just recently returned to the Okanagan Valley and accepted a similar position of in the Department of Creative and Critical Studies at the UBCO. As a full-time Artist and Educator, Serfas has created a new large-scale body of work for this exhibition featuring abstract paintings. The content within these pages which we hope will help to enlighten your insights into Serfas’ work, includes essays by guest writers Derek J. J. Knight and Catherine Parayre, both Associate Professors teaching at the Brock University. I would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Province of British Columbia, the Regional District of the North Okanagan, and the BC Arts Council, whose funding enables us to produce exhibitions such as this for the North Okanagan region and interested parties across Canada. Together with our Curator Lubos Culen, we hope you enjoy this publication and exhibition. Regards, Dauna Kennedy Executive Director Vernon Public Art Gallery
7
Shawn Serfas - Studio, November 2020
Shawn Serfas: This Kind of Wilderness
The works presented in this exhibition at the Vernon Public Art Gallery illustrates the dedication of Shawn Serfas to finding new languages and processes while addressing questions about abstraction. The work communicates different concepts and approaches in the history of abstract paintings. The large-scale paintings and gestural delivery might reference the approaches married to Abstract Expressionism, yet Serfas’ delivery is more controlled while allowing for ‘the concept of chance and accidents’ to occur. His approach to painting is experimental and process oriented and all his work up to date has placed great emphasis on the materiality and the tactility of his paintings’ surfaces. While Serfas’ work is often based on landscape forms observed from high vantage points (the concept of which was the subject of his exhibition at the Vernon Public Art Gallery in 2008), the references to passage of time and space are abstracted. It is inevitable to note that for Serfas different sites, locations and environments are visual thematic underpinnings transposed to the surface of his canvases. As he points out, the paintings reflect, in an abstract manner, the beauty of the environment together with the anti-aesthetic signs of human activity on the environment. In the exhibition titled This Kind of Wilderness, Serfas pushes the edges of abstraction by asking the question whether there is an unknown language in painting to yet be discovered. The surfaces of his paintings are textured and hence they speak of the materiality of paint, but Serfas added additional 3D elements built from pigmented polymer resin. The viewer is faced with the paradox of viewing 3D structures built on presumptively two-dimensional surfaces. The final element in the exhibition is a sculptural object (28 x 9 x 9 in) built on a three-dimensional canvas with a buildup of pigmented polymer on canvas. This object is a paradoxical element which is perceived as a sculptural element, but built by the means of applying pigmented polymer - paint - on canvas. This object/painting has a complete autonomy within the context of this exhibition of paintings and one has to ask the question whether this object is a logical extension of Serfas’ search for the new language of abstraction. Its title, Abrade, is somehow ambiguous as its meaning implies something scraped or eroded, as opposed to something created by focused effort. Despite some concerns about the propensity of abstract art to imply narratives, Serfas titles his paintings tied to the connotation with his own experiences and how he perceives life, world, culture, history and art. Even if the titles do not exactly reveal clearly the significance of some parallel narrative, they are often linked to some universal metanarratives. The title Chariot might simply imply conveyance or travel, but in the abstract sense it implies movement, race, or procession. The painting First Fires, perhaps the most
9
textured in the series, displays the exuberance of three-dimensional forms applied over a fire-red field of brushstrokes. Does the title simply imply ‘the first fires’ the humans learned to control in the environment, or is the title an expression of a new direction in the creator’s studio practice? In the work titled Judges one can notice a dense ordered composition of predominantly vertical white/ bluish brush strokes over the layers of orange and red ground. The title implies impartiality, perhaps trying to find a direction without any preconception of what a new order might entail. In the work Rime the viewer is confronted with an array of black and white swirling ground, which is forcefully intense and perhaps threatening. By contrast, two vertical bars created with the juxtaposition of predominantly red marks stand in contrast with the ground they are positioned on. These two vertical bars were used as an iconography in previous Serfas’ work. Fairly inconclusively, I can only reference the bars as the simulacra of lines on the compass and hence a suggestion of ‘finding the way’ from/to another environment. Similarly, the painting Shake it Out consist of passages of a black and white structure predominantly positioned in the centre of the painting. On the fringes of this structure are passages of colour; this is perhaps a metaphor for the ‘new direction’, whether physical, environmental, or artistic? The Rest of Us carries almost a metaphysical quality in its exuberance of paint delivery and the Gestalt feeling of the ‘here and now’ state. Yet, despite the solid textures of pigmented polymer structures, there is an openness and light emanating from the centre. The image is at once inclusive and inviting, but also forceful in its bursting transformative state. The hint of the sense of transformation may perhaps be suggested in the painting titled There will be Time. The colour palette intensity is reduced to patterns of white, black and red over the ground of earthy colours. The discontinuity in the gestural paint delivery is a chevron shape on top with hard geometric edges. The reference to time is ambiguous which begs the question; is there an event in the future that Serfas contemplates, or is the ‘here and now’ a transitory state in itself? Despite the abstract quality of Serfas’ paintings, there are obviously hints of narratives mostly implied in the paintings’ titles which serve as an entry point to invoke possible associations. There is also a diaristic quality in his work, specifically in the works titled Rudy and Choiceland. The first painting references Serfas’ grandfather and his transition from Europe to Canada. The title of the second painting references a small town in Saskatchewan where Serfas spent his formative years. The painting itself references a bird’s-eye-view of the vast fields of cultivated agricultural land. In developing this painting, Serfas used a square-notched trowel to mimic the fields being cultivated by machinery and producing identical rows in the fields. The golden yellow paint highlights the golden shimmer of harvested crops.
10
Despite the abstract non-representational nature of the paintings in this exhibition, they reflect Serfas’ personal experiences and attitudes. As with all non-representational artwork, there is always a question whether abstraction can generate a narrative. It is clear that we as viewers apprehend any abstract work through our own associations and try to piece together a possible meaning. Serfas provides the entry point in the titles for viewers to examine and consider a modality of interpretations. Often, it is not possible to ‘explain’ an abstract painting within our language structure, but we can contemplate the totality of impact through our associations in a non-verbal realm (Gestalt). Serfas’ paintings are intense and informed by the history of gestural abstraction. Finding his own approach to abstraction, Serfas’ asks whether there is an unknown language, an unexplored territory in abstract painting. Lubos Culen Curator Vernon Public Art Gallery
11
Judges (detail), 2020, acrylic on canvas, 96 x 78 x 5 inches
Shawn Serfas: In Search of Choiceland by Derek J. J. Knight Shawn Serfas has perfected an abstract process in his vibrant canvases that is largely experimental, processoriented and always inventive. His buildup of surface tension –puddled, rolled or spackled pigment, large controlled brush strokes, and blocks or lozenges of colour and underpainting, are characteristic of what I wish to describe as a ‘maximalist painterly sensibility.’ If we can point to the gestural paintings of the American vanguard of the post-War era, or members of the Regina Five in the 1960s, 1970s and beyond, Serfas is a member today of a generation of Canadian artists that includes painters such as John Kissick, Sandra Meigs and Matt Crookshank who have embraced a tactility and experimental posture in their fearless and deft orchestration of their materials. Serfas, is unique and resolute about his trajectory, which has examined most imaginable genres of gestural abstraction, with the exception of the geometries of hard edge or conceptual painting, trends that were the subject of an exhibition curated in 2017-18 by the Vancouver Art Gallery.1 Rather, with Serfas there is always the drama of a robust action in which the paint flows freely, puddles or races to the point of least resistance as the canvas is lifted and manipulated to help establish a fluid colour field that is the basis on which he can then rework the surface with brushes, rollers, trowels, brooms or rakes. In preferring the more performative, chance-oriented actions of gestures, his protracted execution over the period of weeks allows for the accretion and build-up of paint, which can then be sanded down or polished to render a fixed or layered surface. Serfas produces canvases that are physically commanding in their life-size scale but they also harbour important themes that allude to the painter’s belief system, most notably the experience and emotional hold the physical environment exerts on him. There is a longstanding relationship with the Western Canadian and Prairie landscapes, which translates into dramatic, forceful and sometimes ethereal evocations of weathered, horizonless fugues, kaleidoscopic geographies or even lamentations of deeply seeded memories of places and people. These are the leitmotifs of This Kind of Wilderness, a title that asks us to consider how these nine paintings and a single sculpture register beyond their often intense form-making and convey something of the introspective, indeed palpable and illusive world of metaphor. Within the context of This Kind of Wilderness where two thirds of the nine canvases show bold calligraphic strokes, tiled markings made with a broad brush around a centrist often ephemeral image, Choiceland (2021) and Rudy (2021) are more telling in their titles. In Choiceland the yellow-wheat coloured surface is tinged with the loam of the earth in its browns, ochres and oranges. The underpainting is revealed more intensely on the four edges of the canvas, which reinforces the floating apparition of a field of wheat or canola perhaps rippled by the wind. Choiceland is a small town in Saskatchewan, which is cradled between the Torch and North Saskatchewan Rivers and the northern boreal forest.2 In essence it is the artist’s paean to a part of the prairie that has been farmed and has sustained a way of life for settler society since the mid19th century.3
13
If Choiceland captures the spirit or essence of the prairie, Rudy (2021) commemorates the artist’s German grandfather who emigrated to Canada settling first in Prince George, B.C., then in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan in 1968. He was a nickel miner in Sudbury, Ontario in the 1950s and, in Prince George, a tree feller and heavy logging equipment operator. Serfas remembers fondly a self-reliant man who built his own mining machinery and who proved resilient in the wilderness.4 The golden hued, pink tinged fields appear to rise on the horizon line in the shape of a mythical bear and beckon to the sublime galaxy above, where, like a tintype photograph made two generations ago, one can imagine the vapours of woodsmoke melding with the sounds of the smithy, the crows overhead or the bridle path. The cast acrylic forms Serfas calls “conglomerates” populating the upper right and lower left registers lend a physical element that may be perceived beyond any decorative role as cosmic bodies in their biomorphically determined shapes. Although they are easily absorbed by the painting’s scope it is conceivable they have a subconscious function as amenable objects in which pleasure or empathy play a role. Serfas has developed these cast or molded synthetic resin forms independently over the last five years as larger sculptural works in their own right, but here he explores how in miniature form they might be integrated into his paintings. As ‘conglomerates’ they give rise to a concentrated dimensionality and viscosity that are germane only to the unique physical properties of epoxy resin when it is transformed from a liquid to a solid state. Thus, the addition of these cast-formed acrylic molds at strategic points on the canvas is less a synthesis of the painted and sculptural object, than an experiment in what the suspended state produces: coloured, bejewelled, or amorphous shapes that are organic, fluid and sedimentary in quality. The inclusion of Abrade (2020), a 28 x 9 x 9 inch molded synthetic resin sculpture which lies horizontally on a glass covered plinth, provides opportunity for Serfas to reinforce the idea of how core sampling or extraction processes have been the mother lode of prospecting and our industrial procurement of natural resources and dependence on fossil fuels. The title implies an abrasive process that extends to mining and the clearing of the land at a scale only imagined by industrial society. It is a talisman to our arch, mechanistic ambitions –extruded colours that remind us of all that technology has wrought, both sublime and terrible. While it is tempting to describe this richly veined object as inert, it fossilizes so many allusions that for me, it achieves the status of a cultural artifact, while reminding us of the rising tide of ‘hyperobjects’ and materials such as plastic, industrial by-products and waste. With its bold semi-circular motifs, Chariot (2020) is appropriately named to suggest the movement caught on camera of the famous chuck-wagon races run every year in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan. It is exquisite in its control, in fact almost prescient in the repeating motif of the semi-circular arc, which connotes both classical precision and implied movement. Thematically, from David Smith to Robert Morris artists have explored the wheel, be it the wheel for the wheel’s sake or the underlining reference to classical Greek versions of the charioteer, or the centrist images of Arthur McKay, a member of the Regina Five. For Serfas, the several semi-circular gestures give his horizontal tiled underpainting a momentum that effectively dramatizes what otherwise one may be tempted to read as an aerial image of chalk or laterite-coloured fields. Again, parts of the upper and lower register of the canvas are populated by acrylic conglomerates
14
that can be seen as “subdued figurative elements or intelligent masses”.5 In the most practical sense they are relics or artifacts that result from a deeper exploration or experimentation of the studio process, in which the coloured nature of the striations remind one that this is the artist’s way of reinforcing the idea of geological time as well as the metaphysical hold of memory. Such associations are kindled by the scope of Serfas’ project, which revitalizes the idea of painting as an evocation of an ephemeral world in which metaphorical or symbolic meanings are possible.
***
The most effusive and boldest statement in this show is his canvas The Rest of Us (2020). It is a sensorium of emotional affect produced by a vortex of solids and vapours. Part-spectacle, part-sensation, in a musical sense it is a crescendo that builds to a thunderous cataclysm. The role of synaesthesia, where sounds are suggested by visual stimuli, help transport us into this kaleidoscopic world seemingly caught in transition. Punching so much kinetic energy, it literally breathes and exhales as it performs its metamorphosis from languid modulations of colour into a crucible of organic matter at its centre. Lumpen, crustacean, or human, it is in the process of transfiguring into something else: a vessel, an apparition, an icon, or a Madonna. This kind of foment is anticipated in Rime (2020), with its heaving liquid washes and a force that is apocalyptic in tone, which is reminiscent of the biblical parting of the waters in Genesis. Undoubtedly, it is also a reference to Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1798) in which poet and painter alike plumb the power of the subconscious to conjure from the more dramatic allusions to nature both the fear and awe of the natural sublime The Rest of Us is a different kind of orchestration in its disposition of a fluid world that issues dramatically from the artist’s process. However, Serfas crosses genres and creates a unique hybrid form, from the surrounding lattice work of bold blue strokes that leave the edges of the canvas exposed to the central amorphous cluster of pigmented and amalgamated flows. In opening up a portal into an illusory world bending and manipulating the spatial dimension, we witness the unfolding and emergence of an inchoate spectacle, both phantasmagoric and plasmatic as only paint can evoke. The addition again of cast acrylic objects suggests something more effable, a cosmic incarnation in which the paradox between the second and third dimensions is employed to effect. First Fires (2020) is its companion piece; rather than blue strokes, it presents a matrix of red strokes and the central motif may be read as bejeweled ingots that are forged by the artist’s imagination or the viewer’s capacity to read them as such. The reference to the harnessing of fire as our earliest technological step calls to mind when homo sapiens first thought about artmaking as a talisman to both survival and eventual cultural cognizance. Today, the associations include the more dire circumstances in which forest fires rage during the summer months, especially in the interior of British Columbia. Serfas acknowledges First Fires is inspired by Bonobo’s 2013 song of the same title. It is a rhythmic contrast of electronic and classical instrumentation which returns to the refrain of ‘first fires.’ If Serfas’ titles are key to opening up possible interpretations, process remains integral to the ambitious nature of his painting. It is fair to suggest that
15
naming follows the execution of the work and that the associations Serfas finds in the process of execution are both a matter of commitment to his past themes as well as those that occur concurrent to the making of the work. If he titles his works at the end of the production process, he revisits familiar themes or draws from the immediacy of his environs, including the music he listens to when painting. *** Other paintings are more calligraphic in their organising principle. Shake It Out (2020) suggests an aerial image or a map of urban development, in which the architect’s plans overlay the forested or green spaces. The black and white areas suggest diagrammatic schemas in which the mechanistic designs are the dream of city or urban planners. The collaging effect also reminds one of the drawings or photographs that are meant to capture the visionary aspects of urban or suburban growth, yet here they remain abstract and open to suggestion.6 This is less about the upward concentration of steel and glass towers and more about the footprint of urban sprawl, environmentally-charged concerns that Serfas revisits from the past.7 Judges (2020) is conceived much in the same vein, although the palette shifts to red and orange hues, overlaid with lozenges of white and blue. The remnant of the semi-circular motif is there in three visible arcs, but Serfas is drawn to a different form of surface agitation. In a musical sense, it is a crescendo that builds to a thunderous cataclysm, inspired by the piercing horn tones of Colin Stetson’s “Judges” from his album New History Warfare Vol. 2.8 Serfas creates a patchwork that builds from red and orange bold strokes to white and blue striations that are mostly horizontal in nature. This formal thicket still reads like topography, where the heavily impasto surface has the physical quality of urban density. The title Judges implies judgement, but not necessarily a pathway to salvation, although within the tenets of an environmental argument, the broader concerns about climate change come into play. The urgency to act may present a moral and ethical dilemma, but as scientific evidence mounts we are inclined to be more judgemental about those we charge with the responsibility of mediating or resolving the lasting effects of the Anthropocene. There Will Be Time (2021) is veiled in what it implies. To witness the striations and scored treatment of the canvas surface, one may also see in these marks the tracks of a vehicle imprinted on the earth’s surface. However, the reference to time –‘there will be time’– may also be a more optimistic gesture toward the future. But, time for what, we must ask? The footprint that is implied in the convoluted network of red and white and dark semicircular motifs, may be suggestive of the forces of entropy and its capacity to exert its influence over this earthly domain and return it to natural stasis. The inverted black angle at the top of the painting suggests a sighting or calibrating device used in aerial photography or mapping technology. In conflating painterly means with reference to such a technical symbol, Serfas infers the technological sublime, of the kind that we relate to drone surveillance, infrared or aerial photography. If viewed through the lens of an infrared camera, certain patterns are revealed in the landscape. Here, the striations can be likened to tectonic plates or a limner scanning of crop rotation. Moreover, the reference to time may be capricious, strategized to alert us to the very fact that time is, in fact (sui generis), also a matter of urgency.9 *** 16
Much about these paintings reveals an autobiographical point of view, which suggests a long and enduring relationship, an abiding affection for place and concept of the land, but also the memory of Serfas’ formative impressions from having grown up in Saskatchewan. These paintings arguably are intensified by his ten-year residency in Niagara in which he has used his paintings as a way to foster his memories of wide-open, sometimes turgid spaces punctuated by horizonless fields, rivers or lakes, rolling foothills and large skies. At least, in the technical mire, I must argue these are the subconscious meta-narratives that ride to the surface of what ostensibly are abstract works. There are other attributes that stir us to consciousness such as the texture of paint and the surface tensions that emanate from augmented layers, primary, secondary or complementary colours, and fluvial gestures, to convey sublime emotion, chaos and sometimes serenity. These are among the most contemporary or experimental of his paintings that show Serfas is not rutted in one particular genre or style. He remains nimbly committed to thinking critically, passionately and urgently about the environment. The perennial question for him: how to exercise his indefatigable dedication to abstraction while continuing to allude to the visually embedded narratives of open wilderness, the habitats shared by human and animal alike, and the distinct geography of the Prairies or the foothills of the Rockies. The spiritual connection to the land is there in the reverence that he gleans from natural, watershed or arboreal systems – rivers, lakes, forests. Perhaps most importantly, in terms of our collective memory, we experience an opening to new portals in which the ‘push-pull’ between abstraction and manifestations of the subconscious, affect and feeling are dramatized in a fervent and ever innovative appeal to our emotional instincts. If This Kind of Wilderness is a reminder of how nature continues to exert its influence, it also suggests that the heart and soul of this quest is multi-dimensional. A painter of landscape in Canada is festooned with the memory of the palette and frisson of the Group of Seven, but also with the autonomous canvases of the Regina Five and the Emma Lake workshops. Serfas, who came to fruition as a painter with a Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art from the University of Alberta in 2003, has since negotiated a path that is fervently abstract, but rich with allusions to natural topography and the sublime responses we may experience. However, it is also a flawed nature in which entropy or signs of inevitable destruction seep in. He draws spiritual sustenance from a range of sources including Henri Nouwen’s book The Wounded Healer in which the author counsels humility in the face of loss.10 Yet, the project of reimagining a strategy broad enough to touch a chord that is both urgent and affective, leaves one cognizant of the impact of the Anthropocene in what we know to be circumstances increasingly beyond our control. Should we fail to intervene and rectify the environmental conditions that threaten a sustainable future, art, in this respect, remains a clarion call. Serfas makes no pretension about his hybrid version of empirical evidence and his belief in painting’s ability to appeal directly to our cultural memory and critical sensibility. Choiceland remains at the heart of this desire, but in idolizing a world that epitomizes a more harmonious existence Serfas reasserts nature’s hold as a dynamic and immutable entity in our collective imagination. This, also at a time when anxieties are heightened by global warming and the ongoing crisis within First Nations communities concerning unceded territories and unresolved land claims.
17
Derek Knight has been on faculty in the Department of Visual Arts at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, since 1985. Educated at Croydon College of Art, London, England, Carleton University, Ottawa, and State University of New York at Buffalo, he teaches courses in 20th century European and North American art history, contemporary art and theory, and contributes to the MA program in Studies in Comparative Literatures and Arts. Knight has developed a profile as an independent curator and was awarded the INCO prize for curatorial writing in support of his exhibition N.E. Thing Co.: the Ubiquitous Concept at Oakville Galleries in 1995. He has written catalogue essays, authored scholarly papers, and lectured extensively on contemporary art. He was Director of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts between 2009-16 and held Brock University’s first endowed research chair in Creativity, Imagination, and Innovation. He is co-editor of the Small Walker Press. Endnotes 1 Bruce Grenville and David MacWilliam. Entangled: Two Views on Contemporary Canadian Painting. Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery and Black Dog Publishing, 2017. 2 https://www.choiceland.ca/ 3 William Kurelek’s The Ukrainian Pioneer (1971-1976), a six-part series in the National Gallery of Canada, is among the more iconic representations of agriculture based on a trip he made to the Ukraine in 1970. The sixth of the series shows the farmer, his father, waist deep in his golden wheat field at harvest time, which stretches as far as the eye can see. 4 In an email from the artist, December 6, 2020. 5 In conversation with the artist, April 30, 2021. 6 The lyrics of “Shake It Out”, a 2011 song by the British group Florence + The Machine include the line “it’s always darkest before the dawn”, a reference to the nethermind before the dawning of the day. 7 See, for example, Derek Knight, “Shawn Serfas: Trenchant Gesture, Topography and Painting’s Ethereal Nature,” Shawn Serfas: Inland. St. Catharines/Vienna: Small Walker Press/Salon für Kunstbuch, 2019. 8 Serfas has stated that the music he listens to while painting is helpful in establishing both the mood and tone of a canvas such as The Rest of Us or Judges. 9 Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin, “Art and Death: Lives Between the Fifth Assessment & the Sixth,” Art in the Anthropocene. Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies, eds Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin. London: Open Humanities Press, 2015, pp. 6-7. 10 Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society. New York: Doubleday, 1979.
18
Abrade (centre detail), 2020, acrylic on dimensional canvas, 28 x 9 x 9 inches
Visceral stories, germinating landscapes by Catherine Parayre In her reflections on “enchanted things” critic Kari Kraus evokes how cutaway drawings show “something else existing” inside objects.1 They “provide a partial look,” usually for didactic purposes, be they an anatomical illustration from the Renaissance, the interior of a plane, the cross-section drawing of an engine or today’s computer-aided design.2 Shawn Serfas’ paintings often take the appearance of large cutaways displaying the interior of his vibrant compositions. Rather than having a didactic or explanatory purpose, they disclose the solidity of his creations, while adding more abstraction to abstraction. They do not represent; they expose the materials the artist works with and how these interact with one another. They may suggest geological strata, or the entrails of a body, the mechanisms of a tool, the brickwork in a wall, the magnified intricacies of fabric, or vegetation, but no matter what we see in them, they are first and foremost a demonstrative revelation to the curious eye. These formidable cutaways sculpted out of heavy masses have an arresting beauty and, if the word “sublime” may be applied to Serfas’ paintings, it is certainly to these cross-sections – formed in either the excrescencies or the flat surfaces of the paintings – carved and polished with sheer force and confident precision. In disclosing complex structures, cutaways “reveal the relationships between […] interior parts and between the object’s interior and exterior”.3 “Maximize[ing] the visibility of important features”4, they present the design and “spatial relationships” of “occluding” and “occluded” structures5, a formulation that also summarizes Serfas’ performative aesthetics. Cutaway drawings provide not just technical, but also narrative information.6 In fact, they “provoke narrative” and an “emotional, imaginative […] experience”.7 They encourage “deliberate fictions, ones that flagrantly call attention to themselves as impossibilities [yet] as a means of establishing true facts”.8 Assuredly, Serfas’ paintings abound in implicit narratives. Although no story is fully accounted for, pre-narratives inhabit their textures and forms. Looking at their ins and outs, viewers are likely to perceive such prompts, propose subjective interpretations, identify figures, detect myths and motifs – namely, invent their own stories. Serfas himself is not their narrator.
***
In 1977, Roland Barthes wrote a little-known article on photographs of rural life made by Daniel Boudinet. At first sight, the medium, the black-and-white aesthetics, their size and realism would dampen any comparison with Serfas’ work; yet, they share a compelling poetics; and Barthes’ words describing Boudinet’s images apply to Serfas’ paintings: both artists, fascinated by nature, get “close to” their “terreaux” (“soils,” my translation) and know how to capture their “germination and corruption,” as well as the “dazzle” caused by what grows out of them.9 Although large and abstract, Serfas’ paintings maintain a pronounced connection to nature and its opulent details – the undulations of wheat fields, the anfractuosities of the soil, the pollution that seeps into it, the myriad of colours forming brilliant kaleidoscopes, life being born and its daily decay, the patient labour of workers and their repeated movements to tame the land. 20
Serfas’ stylistics also echoes Boudinet’s. For one, his paintings often include “pictural citations,” which Barthes describes as emblematic content highlighted by distinct marks on the lateral sides of an image. For instance, the two sculptural conglomerates on Serfas’ Choiceland function as “quotation marks”10 inside which the tightly set yellow lines evoke not just one but conceivably all the wheat fields in the world. Serfas’ large gestures imprinted on canvas evoke patterns, even “grids,” in which Barthes would likely discern, as in Boudinet’s photographs, the slow erasure of human intervention in a landscape, a reduction to primeval presence.11 Indeed, if Serfas’ paintings disclose his intimate interaction with his materials, the artist also practices long pauses to let them mature and allow extensive chemical interactions that will transmute then solidify his own intervention. One will also recognize “signatures,” which in Barthes’ vocabulary are “hieroglyphs” signaling life without signifying or identifying specific meaning.12 The protuberant marks and the vigorous applications of colours in Serfas’ paintings are such bright signatures of being-there; they call out to us by “showing,” not by “telling”.13 Overall, these paintings, like Boudinet’s photographs, are what Barthes calls “formulas”: rather than illustrating, they “vaguely” and “deliciously” suggest unconstrained cultural associations – “myths, poems, stories, songs, paintings, and tapestries” – without ever imposing on the viewer any certainty; they invite us to deploy our thoughts and impressions as we wish.14
***
If I had to choose one word to describe Serfas’ work, it would be “birth” because, when I look at his paintings, I think of wondrous fountains and water gushing from a spring. His work erupts and blossoms; it celebrates beginnings, whether the germs of a narrative or the controlled process the artist activates before letting the chemical components do their alchemy. The thick layers of paint, large movements, cross-sections, and protuberances are consummate demonstrations of this process. Viewers are invited to observe inside and outside the works and how they project in space. Such paintings are both an offering and an awakening. But the artist does not make it easy for us and we need to be grateful for this: many bright colours and forms take us to the limits of taste; tensions and conflicts between them are manifest and looking at these works requires some effort, as we need to get past the points of resistance where colours and movements push us back before we can admire their astonishing vividness. Something visceral exists in Serfas’ paintings – at times, we will think of sanguinolent écorchés or hunted animals whose innards have been taken out; as such, the birth of the painting will strangely be akin to dismembering or skinning. Overall, we get to see – penetrate – the articulations of matter under and above the surface, as much as disarticulations – grazed surfaces, potentially painful tactility, a scream, rough scarring. In turn, such tearing apart captures the sensuous work of the painter/sculptor. Tensions despite inclusive curves, the suggestion of bars and grids, memories of eroded grounds and worn-out wooden floors, the orange sunshine as well 21
as nature burning: such births look ancient, used, abused, without losing shape or strength. However embattled and adventurous, the paintings are thoughtfully composed and carefully controlled by an artist who experiments with matter, lets it work and grow, but never quite freely. He enjoys dissecting and shaping it, silently planting plots. I conclude with a famous remark by Barthes in S/Z: “Interpreting a text is not the same as assigning meaning […]; on the contrary, it is about appreciating the plurality it is made of” (my translation). For Barthes, this profusion of nascent associations makes a text “writerly” (“scriptible”), that is, open to the many interruptions, complications, entanglements of stories and images. Serfas practices this type of opening in a concrete way, not in a text, but directly with the materials and colourful aggregations of his paintings.
Catherine Parayre is Associate Professor in the Centre for Studies in Arts and Cultures, at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, Brock University. Co-editor of the Small Walker Press, she has conducted several projects with Shawn Serfas, including the publication of “Inland” (2019) featuring his work and creative writing by Richard Fausset; her co-curation of the exhibition “Post-Industrial Ephemera: Soundings, Gestures, Poetics” (2017) at Silo City, Buffalo, United States where Serfas presented his work; as co-artist in the exhibition “Pseudo-fiction” (2017) shown at Toronto’s Alliance Française; and as co-artist in the project “A River Rises” (Niagara Region, 2020). Endnotes 1 Kraus, Kari. “The Care of Enchanted Things.” Debates in the Digital Humanities. Ed. Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein. U of Minnesota P, 2019. 161-178. 2 Langdon, James. “A Eulogy for the Cutaway.” Fillip 17 (2012). 93-102. 3 Ross, Shawna. “Ocean-Liner Cutaways, Diagrams, and Composites: Technical Illustration as Mass Aesthetic in Popular Mechanics and The Illustrated London News.” The Journal of Modern Periodical Studies 8.1 (2017). 1-33. 4 Sigg, Stephan et al. “Intelligent Cutaway Illustrations.” IEEE Pacific Visualization Symposium. Songdo, South Korea: IEEE, 2012. 185-192. Quoted in Ross. 5 Li, Wilmot et al. “Interactive Cutaway Illustrations of Complex 3D Models,” ACM Transactions on Graphics 26.3 (2007). N.p. Quoted in Ross. 6 Ross, 7 7 Ibid, 7 8 Ibid, 15 9 Barthes, Roland. “Sur des photographies de Daniel Boudinet.” Roland Barthes: oeuvres complètes. Vol. III. Ed. Eric Marty. Paris: Seuil, 1993. 718. 10 Ibid, 708 11 Ibid, 710 12 Ibid, 715 13 Ibid, 715 14 Ibid, 714 15 Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Paris: Seuil, 1970. 22
Rudy (detail), 2021, acrylic on canvas, 98 x 78 x 5 inches
Histoires Viscérales, Paysages en Germination par Catherine Parayre Dans sa réflexion sur les « choses enchantées » (ma traduction), la critique Kari Kraus évoque combien les dessins en coupe montrent « quelque chose d’autre qui existe » à l’intérieur des objets .1 Ils « procurent une vue partielle », généralement à des fins didactiques, qu’il s’agisse d’une planche anatomique de la Renaissance, de l’intérieur d’un avion, de la coupe d’un moteur ou, aujourd’hui, de design informatique.2 Les tableaux de Shawn Serfas ont souvent l’apparence de larges vues transversales révélant l’intérieur de ses vibrantes compositions. Dépourvus de dessein didactique ou explicatif, ils mettent à nu la solidité de ses créations tout en rendant encore plus abstraite l’abstraction qui les caractérise. Plutôt que de vouloir représenter, ils exposent les matériaux que l’artiste emploie et montrent comment ceux-ci interagissent. Ils suggèrent à volonté des strates géographiques ou les entrailles d’un corps, les mécanismes d’un outil, les briques d’un mur, la subtilité magnifiée du tissu, ou une végétation, mais peu importe ce qu’on y trouve, ils sont en premier lieu une révélation démonstrative. Ces formidables coupes transversales sculptées dans de lourdes masses sont d’une beauté surprenante et, si le mot « sublime » peut être appliqué aux tableaux de Serfas, il décrit assurément ces coupes - formées soit dans les excrescences ou dans la surface plate des tableaux - taillées et polies avec une précision sûre et énergique. Dévoilant des agencements complexes, les vues transversales « révèlent les relations mises en place entre [ ] des éléments internes et entre l’extérieur et l’intérieur des objets ».3 « Maximisant la visibilité de particularités importantes »4, elles présentent l’organisation et les « relations spatiales » de structures « occultantes » et « occlues »5, formulation qui résume également l’esthétique performative de Serfas. Les dessins en coupe apportent des informations techniques, mais aussi narratives.6 En fait, ils « provoquent la narrativité » et une « expérience émotionnelle, imaginative ».7 Ils encouragent des « fictions délibérées, qui rappellent leur impossibilité de manière flagrante [et qui pourtant] sont un moyen d’établir de véritables faits ».8 Certainement, les tableaux de Serfas abondent en récits implicites. Bien qu’aucun ne soit finalement dit, ces pré-récits habitent leur texture et leurs formes. Observant les détails, les spectateurs percevront probablement ces amorces de récit, proposeront des interprétations subjectives, identifieront des mythes et des motifs - c’est-à-dire qu’ils inventeront des histoires. Serfas lui-même n’en est pas le narrateur.
***
En 1977, Roland Barthes écrit un article peu connu sur douze photographies de la vie rurale réalisées par Daniel Boudinet. Au premier abord, le médium, l’esthétique en noir et blanc, leur taille et leur réalisme sembleraient empêcher toute comparaison avec l’œuvre de Serfas. Toutefois, elles partagent une poétique captivante et les termes qu’emploie Barthes pour décrire les images de Boudinet, distinguent aussi les tableaux de Serfas : les deux artistes, que la nature fascine, restent « près » de leurs « terreaux » et savent
24
capter leur « germination et corruption », de même que l’« éblouissement » causé par ce qui y croît.9 Bien que larges et abstraits, les tableaux de Serfas maintiennent une relation prononcée à la nature et à ses opulents détails – l’ondulation des champs de blé, les anfractuosités du sol, la pollution qui s’y infiltre, les myriades de couleurs formant de brillants kaléidoscopes, la vie naissante et sa décomposition quotidienne, le travail patient des ouvriers et les mouvements répétés qui apprivoisent la terre. La stylistique propre à Serfas fait également écho à celle de Boudinet. D’une part, ses tableaux incluent fréquemment des « citations picturales », que Barthes décrit comme un contenu emblématique mis en relief par des marques distinctes placées sur les côtés latéraux d’une image. Par exemple, chez Serfas, les deux conglomérés sculpturaux dans Choiceland fonctionnent comme des « guillemets »10 à l’intérieur desquels des lignes jaunes resserrées évoquent non pas un, mais tous les champs de blé du monde. Les gestes amples de l’artiste imprimés sur la toile évoquent des motifs, voire des « grilles », dans lesquels Barthes discernerait vraisemblablement, comme dans les photographies de Boudinet, le lent effacement de la trace humaine dans le paysage, une réduction à une présence « primitive ».11 En effet, si les tableaux de Serfas témoignent d’un engagement intime avec les matériaux utilisés, l’artiste pratique également de longues pauses pour laisser murir l’œuvre et permettre à des réactions chimiques substantielles de transformer puis de solidifier son intervention. On reconnaitra aussi des « signatures », qui, dans le vocabulaire de Barthes, sont des « hiéroglyphes » signalant la vie sans toutefois signifier ou identifier de sens spécifique.12 Les marques protubérantes et les applications vigoureuses de couleurs dans les tableaux de Serfas sont de semblables signatures de l’êtrelà ; elles nous interpellent pour « montrer », et non « dire ».13 Dans l’ensemble, ses tableaux, comme les photographies de Boudinet, forment ce que Barthes nomme des « formules » : ils suggèrent « vaguement mais délicieusement » des associations culturelles sans contraintes -« mythes, poèmes, contes, chansons, peintures et tapisseries » – sans imposer de certitude aux spectateurs ; ils nous invitent à déployer à souhait notre pensée et nos impressions.14
***
Si je devais choisir un mot pour décrire l’œuvre de Serfas, ce serait « naissance » parce que je pense à des fontaines merveilleuses et à l’eau jaillissant d’une source lorsque je les contemple. Son œuvre fait irruption et fleurit ; elle célèbre les commencements, que ce soient les germes d’une narration ou le processus contrôlé que l’artiste exerce avant de laisser la magie chimique faire sa part. Les épaisses couches de peinture, les larges mouvements, les plans de coupe et les diverses protubérances sont de convaincantes démonstrations de ce processus. Les spectateurs sont conviés à examiner l’intérieur et l’extérieur des œuvres et comment
25
elles se projettent dans l’espace. Ces tableaux sont à la fois une offrande et un réveil. Mais l’artiste ne nous facilite pas la tâche et nous devons en être reconnaissants : de nombreuses couleurs vives et autant de formes nous poussent à la limite du goût ; tensions et conflits se manifestent entre elles et il convient de dépasser les points de résistance où les couleurs et les mouvements nous repoussent avant de pouvoir admirer leur étonnante vitalité. Quelque chose de viscéral existe dans les tableaux de Serfas – parfois, nous penserons à des écorchés sanguinolents ou à des animaux morts dont les boyaux ont été extirpés ; dans ces cas, la naissance du tableau s’apparentera étrangement à un démembrement ou à un dépeçage. Dans l’ensemble, nous voyons – pénétrons – les articulations de la matière sous et sur la surface, de même que ses désarticulations – surfaces égratignées, tactilité potentiellement douloureuse, un cri, des cicatrices rugueuses. Ces déchirements capturent le travail sensuel du peintre/sculpteur. Des tensions malgré des courbes inclusives, la suggestion de barreaux et de grilles, le souvenir de sols érodés et de planchers usés, le soleil orange et la nature qui brûle : de telles naissances sont anciennes, usées, abusées, sans jamais perdre leur forme ou leur force. Bien qu’audacieux, les tableaux sont soigneusement composés et contrôlés par un artiste qui expérimente avec la matière, la laisse travailler et se développer, mais jamais en toute liberté. Il a plaisir à la disséquer et à lui donner forme, y plantant silencieusement des intrigues. Je conclus avec une remarque célèbre de Barthes dans S/Z: « Interpréter un texte, ce n’est pas lui donner un sens [ ], c’est au contraire apprécier de quel pluriel il est fait ».15 Pour Barthes, cette profusion d’associations naissantes rend un texte « scriptible » (à savoir, ouvert aux multiples interruptions, complications et enchevêtrements des histoires et des images. Serfas pratique ce type d’ouverture de façon concrète, non dans un texte, mais directement dans les matériaux et les agrégations de ses tableaux.
Catherine Parayre est professeure associée dans le Centre d’Études en arts et culture à l’École des beauxarts et arts de la scène Marilyn I. Walker de l’Université Brock. Co-directrice de la Small Walker Press, elle a conduit plusieurs projets avec Shawn Serfas, parmi lesquels la publication de Inland (2019), catalogue de ses œuvres accompagné d’écriture créative par Richard Fausset ; la co-organisation de l’exposition « PostIndustrial Ephemera : Soundings, Gestures, Poetics » (2017) à Silo City (Buffalo, États-Unis) dans laquelle Serfas a présenté son travail ; en tant que co-artiste dans l’exposition « Pseudo-fiction » (2017) à l’Alliance française de Toronto ; et en tant que co-artiste lors du projet « A River Rises » (Région du Niagara, 2020).
26
Notes de fin 1 Kraus, Kari. “The Care of Enchanted Things.” Debates in the Digital Humanities. Ed. Matthew K. Gold and Lauren F. Klein. U of Minnesota P, 2019. 161-178. 2 Langdon, James. “A Eulogy for the Cutaway.” Fillip 17 (2012). 93-102. 3 Ross, Shawna. “Ocean-Liner Cutaways, Diagrams, and Composites: Technical Illustration as Mass Aesthetic in Popular Mechanics and The Illustrated London News.” The Journal of Modern Periodical Studies 8.1 (2017). 1-33. 4 Sigg, Stephan et al. “Intelligent Cutaway Illustrations.” IEEE Pacific Visualization Symposium. Songdo, South Korea: IEEE, 2012. 185-192. Quoted in Ross. 5 Li, Wilmot et al. “Interactive Cutaway Illustrations of Complex 3D Models,” ACM Transactions on Graphics 26.3 (2007). N.p. Quoted in Ross. 6 Ross, 7 7 Ibid, 7 8 Ibid, 15 9 Barthes, Roland. “Sur des photographies de Daniel Boudinet.” Roland Barthes: oeuvres complètes. Vol. III. Ed. Eric Marty. Paris: Seuil, 1993. 718. 10 Ibid, 708 11 Ibid, 710 12 Ibid, 715 13 Ibid, 715 14 Ibid, 714 15 Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Paris: Seuil, 1970.
27
ARTIST STATEMENT
The foundation of my art practice and creative research explores the relationships between environmental sciences, the landscape and issues bordering abstraction and representation. Within that framework I pose questions concerning identity, place, ancestral origin, religion, and relational abstraction. As a painter I believe that content is negotiated through process and my studio practice is experimental and process driven. I am interested in the physicality or, what I term the geomorphology of paint and how it becomes a surrogate for other forms of matter and their respective meanings. This view filters my creative research through a systematic lens relating to observational experiments assessing the physical and chemical properties of marks I make in relation to a pluralistic range of concepts. Importantly, my interest in geomorphology is aided by my understanding of hydrology and remote imaging. These have influenced an order of physical governance in my painting practice that reveals a topographical or aerial perspective using geological references and employing specific painting techniques that mimic environmental forces. Relational Abstraction is a proposition, which asserts that nature is the genetic source of all abstractions in art. If the centrifugal withdrawal or separation of an idea or matter from its parent group is the definition of objective abstraction, then relational abstraction is a centripetal or constant force. In reinforcing the constant action of abstraction, it is not an empty, subjective formal vessel; for it is here the line between abstraction and representation is blurred. This is the crux of my philosophical approach to painting. Chaos theory and anti-aesthetic theory also influence the decisions formed in my studio practice. Geometry and architecture dominate the figurative language in my painting, while perceived levels of chaos establish the field which I chart. Specifically, it is the notion of the repeated pattern and self-similarity of visual information throughout micro and macro scales that informs my practice. The elusive presence of beauty and the search for purpose or structure within painting invite an anti-aesthetic discourse. I am interested in questioning my own perspective of beauty, examining the acquired tenets governed by taste in art, while critically examining the purpose and role of formulating my own discrete visual language. My creative practice is directly linked to my surroundings and daily observations of physical space. I am interested in the marks that humans have made upon the landscape, and especially how these manifest and influence natural spaces. This contrast is paralleled in the choices I make with figure/
28
ground, geometric/organic or order/chaos relationships within painting and my ideas of describing space. The analyses of indirect painting processes and the accumulation or layering of complex visual language over composite or empirical visual information regularly inform my research. I believe that the process of painting is much like studying the origin of landforms or the environmental influences upon landscapes; it is an observational exercise in acquiring data, forming a proposition, and testing those ideas. The main question always under inquiry is, what makes a painting a painting? A secondary question always present in my work examines the objecthood of painting relative to conventions of pictorial illusions and how this relationship imitates everyday experiences concerning object-illusions. I create pictures of foreign, remote, unknown, and immaterial terrains, both atmospheric and subterranean in nature. The descriptive images I create portray the forces that shape both ideas and matter; they are invented, sourced and auto fictional. Shawn Serfas, 2021
29
shawn serfas this kind of wilderness
Images of paintings in the exhibition at the Vernon Public Art Gallery July 29 - September 29, 2021
31
Chariot, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 96 x 78 x 5 inches
First Fires, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 96 x 78 x 5 inches
First Fires, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 96 x 78 x 5 inches
Rime, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 96 x 78 x 5 inches
Shake It Out, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 96 x 78 x 5 inches
The Rest Of Us, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 96 x 78 x 5 inches
Rudy, 2021, acrylic on canvas, 96 x 78 x 5 inches
There Will Be Time, 2021, acrylic on canvas, 96 x 78 x 5 inches
Choiceland, 2021, acrylic on canvas, 96 x 78 x 5 inches
Abrade, 2020, acrylic on dimensional canvas, 28 x 9 x 9 inches
SHAWN SERFAS
CURRICULUM VITAE
Formal Education 2003 2002 2000
Master of Fine Arts Degree (M.F.A.), University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Bachelor of Arts Degree (B.A.), Major in Art History, Graduated with Great Distinction University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree (B.F.A.), Graduated with Great Distinction and Distinguished Thesis Exhibition, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
Research Expertise
Contemporary painting, drawing and printmaking practices concerning relational bstraction,environmental aesthetics, religion, the landscape as well as issues bordering abstraction and representation.
Academic Positions Held 2021- 2012-2021
2004-2012
Associate Professor, Department of Creative Studies, Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies University of British Columbia Associate Professor, Department of Visual Arts, Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, Brock University Lecturer, Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies, University of British Columbia
Research Affiliates
Associate, Research Centre in Interdisciplinary Arts and Creative Culture, Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture, Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, Brock University
Creative / Scholarly Research Exhibitions and Curatorial Projects (Selected)
2020 2019 2018 2017
Industrial Niagara, Group Exhibition, Rodman Hall Arts Centre, St. Catharines, Ontario Folding of Gesture, Solo Exhibition, Darrell Bell Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Rail Post, Group Exhibition, Front Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta Seeing Red, Group Exhibition, Darrell Bell Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Geographies of Process, Co-Curated with Catherine Parayre, Group Exhibition, Die Baeckerei, Innsbruck, Austria Grid Terrain, Solo Exhibition, Gallery MX, Montreal, Quebec Pseudo-Fiction (with Catherine Parayre), Pierre Leon Gallery, Alliance française de Toronto, Ontario Poost-Industrial Ephemera: Soundings, Gestures and Poetics, Group Exhibition, Silo-City, Buffalo, New York 52
2016 2015 2014
2013
Visual Appropriations and Rewritings, Co-Curated with Catherine Parayre, Group Exhibition, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria Inland, Solo Exhibition, Rodman Hall Arts Centre, St. Catharines, Ontario, Curated by Stuart Reid, Please also visit: http://shawnserfas.com/project/inland-2016/ From Likeness to Fiction: The Portrait Inside Out, Curated by Janet Werner, Exhibition Hall, Department of Creative and Festival Arts, The University of The West Indies St. Augustine, Trinidad W.I Dig, Solo Exhibition, Machine Shop Gallery, Algoma University, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario Please also visit: http://shawnserfas.com/project/dig-2015/ Chaussettes vertes et bonne nuit, les étoiles / Green Socks and Goodnight Stars, Co-Curated with Catherine Parayre, Group Exhibition, Rodman Hall Arts Centre, St. Catharines, Ontario BrainStorms: UAlberta Creates, Group Exhibition, Enterprise Square Galleries, Edmonton, Alberta ECAS 21st Anniversary Exhibition, Peter Robertson Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta 34 Mini Print International De Cadaqués, (Catalogue), Gallery L’Etangd’Art, Bages, France Fundació Tharrats d’Art Gràfic, Pineda de Mar, Spain, Taller Galeria Fort, Cadaqués, Girona, Spain, Wingfield Barns, Church Rd, Wingfield, Diss, Norfolk, England In the Park, the Horses Didn’t Mind, Co-Curated with Catherine Parayre, Group Exhibition, Niagara Artists Centre, St. Catharines, Ontario Insomnia, Group Exhibition, Redhead Gallery, Toronto, Ontario Convergence, 50th Annual Juried Exhibition, Tom Thomson Art Gallery, Owen Sound, Ontario Academia: Judy Major-Girardin, Martin Pearce, Shawn Serfas, and Bruce Taylor, Earls Court Gallery, Hamilton, Ontario Possible Object, (includes work by William Ronald, Ronald Bloore and Shawn Serfas), Group Exhibition, Rodman Hall Arts Centre, St. Catharines, Ontario Northern Notes, Group Exhibition, Lessedra Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria, (Catalogue) Plaything, Solo Exhibition, Congress: Borders Without Boundaries, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario Shawn Serfas: Re-Picturing the Landscape, Solo Exhibition, Penticton Art Gallery, Penticton, British Columbia (Catalogue Godfrey Dean Art Gallery) Please also visit: http://shawnserfas.com/project/re-picturing-the-landscape-2013/ Polyglot: Braille/Babble, Group Exhibition, Rodman Hall Arts Centre, St. Catharines, Ontario JNAAG Juried Art Show, Judith & Norman Alix Art Gallery, Sarnia, Ontario ECAS 20th Anniversary Exhibition, Enterprise Square Galleries, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta
53
2011 2010
2009 2008
2007
2005 2004 2003
Borderlands – Imagining the Immaterial, Solo Exhibition, (Catalogue Vernon Public Art Gallery), Art Gallery of Prince Albert, Prince Albert, Saskatchewan Insight - Artist as Educator, Penticton Art Gallery, Penticton, British Columbia University of British Columbia Faculty Exhibition, Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver, British Columbia Borderlands – Imagining the Immaterial, Solo Exhibition, (Catalogue Vernon Public Art Gallery), The Godfrey Dean Art Gallery, Yorkton, Saskatchewan Field + Canal, Solo Exhibition, Agnes Bugera Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta ECAS 18th Anniversary Exhibition, Edmonton Contemporary Artists’ Society, Common Sense Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta Radial Grey, Solo Exhibition, SOPA Fine Art Gallery, Kelowna, British Columbia Borderlands – Imagining the Immaterial, Solo Exhibition, (Catalogue), Vernon Public Art Gallery, Vernon, British Columbia Tide + Recess, Solo Exhibition, SOPA Fine Art Gallery, Kelowna, British Columbia Boundaries, Group Exhibition, Kelowna Art Gallery, Kelowna, British Columbia (Catalogue) Borderlands, (with Luc Bernard), Agnes Bugera Gallery, Edmonton2006 Basin and Range, Solo Exhibition, SOPA Fine Art Gallery, Kelowna, British Columbia The Hour Glass, The Long Galley, Group Exhibition, University of Wollongong, Wollongong NSW, Australia Telluric Currents, Solo Exhibition, Agnes Bugera Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta ECAS 12th Anniversary Exhibition, Edmonton Contemporary Artists’ Society, Edmonton, Alberta Journey to the Surface of the Earth, Solo Exhibition, Agnes Bugera Gallery, Edmonton Other Voices, Group Exhibition, Latitude 53 Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta Connect Four, The Works Art and Design Festival, The Works International Visual Arts Society, Edmonton, Alberta Fast Forward, Group Exhibition, FAB Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta
Refereed Publications, Exhibition Catalogues, Monographs, Image Credits and Essays (Selected)
Culen, Lubos. Introduction and Interview in Borderlands – Imagining the Immaterial (Catalogue), Vernon Public Art Gallery, March 2008, pp. 4-5 and 14-24 Daniels, Lisa. Introduction to the Judith & Norman Alix Art Gallery Juried Art Show (Catalogue), Judith & Norman Alix Art Gallery, 2003 MacHardy, Carolyn. “Liminal Spaces” in Borderlands – Imagining the Immaterial (Catalogue), Vernon Public Art Gallery, March 2008, pp. 6-11
54
_______________. “Encounters with the Sublime: The Art of Shawn Serfas” in Re-Picturing the Landscape (Catalogue), Godfrey Dean Art Gallery, 2011, pp. 8-11 Maeve Conrick, Munroe Eagles, Jane Koustas, and Caitríona Ní Chasaide, editors, Landscapes and Landmarks of Canada Real, Imagined, (Re)Viewed, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Release Date, September 2016, Cover Image: Rise, Plaything Series, 2010, Acrylic, Oil, Mixed Media on Canvas, 152.4 cm x 121.9 cm (60 inches x 48 inches) Parayre, Catherine, ed. “Alloyed” Silo City, Buffalo, NY. Post-Industrial Ephemera: Soundings, Gestures and Poetics. Ed. Catherine Parayre and Reinhard Reitzenstein. St. Catharines, ON: Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts, 2018, pp. 18-20 Parayre, Catherine and Shawn Serfas. “De l’art, du francais, des histoires pour les enfants: une experience d’enseignement a l’universite.” Quo vadis, Romania? 49 (2017), pp. 7-27 Parayre, Catherine and Shawn Serfas. Erasures, ti< A Journal of Text-And-Image Criticism/Creation, Vol 8, No.1 (2019) _______________. Colour Constructs / Constructions de couleurs, ti< A Journal of Text-And-Image Criticism/ Creation, Vol 7, No.1 (2018), pp. 13-19 _______________. Visual Appropriations and Rewritings, ti< A Journal of Text-And-Image Criticism/Creation, Vol 5, No.1 (2016), pp. 17-20, pp. 1-12 _______________. Chaussettes vertes et bonne nuit, les étoiles / Green Socks and Goodnight Stars, ti< A Journal of Text-And-Image Criticism/Creation, Vol 4, No.1 (2015) Serfas, Shawn. “Acrylique sur toile.” Voix plurielles 15.2 (2018), pp. 240-247 Serfas, Shawn. Inland, with creative writing by Richard Fausset and an essay by Derek Knight. St. Catharines, ON and Vienna, Austria: Small Walker Press and Salon für Kunstbuch, 2019 Stein, Donald. “Introduction” in Re-Picturing the Landscape (Catalogue), Godfrey Dean Art Gallery, 2011, p.4 Wylie, Liz. Exhibition and Artist Introduction in Boundaries (Catalogue), Kelowna Art Gallery, University of British Columbia Okanagan Artists Exhibition, November 2008
55
shawn serfas · this kind of wilderness
vernon public art gallery vernon, british columbia canada www.vernonpublicartgallery.com
shawn serfas this kind of wilderness
