Nicholas Metivier Gallery is pleased to announce Between Always and Never, an exhibition of new monotypes and paintings by Bobbie Burgers. The exhibition will open on September 10th and run until October 1st. This is Burgers’ third solo exhibition at the gallery.
Vancouver-based painter Bobbie Burgers is known for her experimental approach with mediums ranging from oil pastel to spray paint to impastoed acrylic. Her ongoing exploration of new methods and techniques has propelled her floral-inspired compositions into new territories, with increasing abstraction defining her gestural application of colour on canvas and paper.
Central to this exhibition is an ambitious series of new monotypes by Burgers, printed last spring with Master Printer Gregory Burnet at Burnet Editions in New York City and published by Nicholas Metivier Gallery. This was Burgers’ first time working in this medium. Printmaking provides a distinct and often very different approach within an artist’s practice, opening up new realms of possibilities, ideas, and methods of working. With the monotype process, an artist draws or paints directly onto a plate to create a single unique print. For Burgers, it was an ideal medium to adapt her signature expressive mark-making from painting to printmaking.
Using oil paints and printing inks, Burgers created multi-colour diptychs that echo the nuanced and ethereal qualities that characterize her recent paintings on raw canvas. The diptychs required multiple impressions, to add additional compositional elements after they had been run through the printing press. This technique enhanced the texture and dimension of her monotypes and required careful consideration of the relationship between the two sheets of paper.
In a series of monochromatic works, Burgers embraced one of the most definitive characteristics of the monotypes, the ability to take marks away. Vibrant blue and red inks were rolled onto Plexiglas plates then removed and shaped using sponges, felt tips, spoolies (mascara wands) and spray bottles filled with mineral spirits.
Burgers’ printmaking experience at Burnet Editions has pushed her practice to new horizons because of the spontaneous nature of the monotype medium. When she returned to her Vancouver studio, Burgers made a series of diptych paintings based on what she learned in New York. These works are shown in context with Burgers’ monotypes as part of the exhibition.
Creating a print that is singular, I came to understand a different method of mark-making that shook up my deeply ingrained routine. Instead of thick brushstrokes, the oils and printing inks had to be deadly smooth. For the most part, rather than applying colour, I was taking away. There is no moving or adding of marks after its run through the press, which is very different from painting or drawing which can be infinitely altered. I had to be decisive and take larger leaps of faith.
- Bobbie Burgers
