Reception for the artist: Thursday, October 17, 6 – 8 PM
The Nicholas Metivier Gallery is pleased to announce Erratus, an exhibition of new paintings by Toronto-based artist Stephen Appleby-Barr. The exhibition will open on October 17 and will be on view through November 9 with a reception for the artist on Thursday, October 17 from 6–8 pm.
In the last four years, Appleby-Barr has quickly become internationally renowned for his Old Master-style paintings with a contemporary twist. Curious and well-read, Appleby-Barr plays with classical literature and portraiture by infusing them into his own, partly fictional and partly autobiographical, narrative paintings. The delightfully dark world he creates has its own set of rules and conventions, where cat or doll-headed figures are not out of the ordinary. His remarkable facility to render materials such as fabric, fur and armor in extraordinarily realistic detail draws a comparison with painters including Rembrandt and Lucien Freud.
This exhibition features a range of subjects including self-portraits, still-lifes and his signature cast of characters – Punchy, Dark Messenger and Panty Hose. In his earlier paintings, the theme was of fraternity, often taking the form of group portraits in a den-like location. In Erratus, meaning to go astray and make mistakes, the fraternity has disassembled and taken to a metaphorical road, the protagonist embarking on his own journey. To set the stage for this journey, Appleby-Barr borrows symbolic locations - the mountain, the garden, the cave and the furnace – from one of his most important literary influences, Northrop Frye.
This is Appleby-Barr’s second exhibition at the gallery. His work has been exhibited in Canada and the United States and is already in many prominent collections internationally.
