Design in Printmaking

Featuring work by Lorna Livey, Laurynas Navidauskas, Shogo Okada & Yorodeo

This group exhibition features original prints by Canadian artists whose work has a design aesthetic. Each work has a strong sense of design that is either intentional or unintentional. These artists utilize elements of design—line, shape, form, colour, space and texture—blurring the boundaries of art and design.

Lorna Livey’s monotypes are based on photographs taken on a return flight from Indonesia, where the
oranges, blues and inky blue-black appear compressed and intense. Her work captures that moment and focuses on meditation and spirituality. Architectural drawings, semi-abstracted play on still life, and the whimsical aspects of everyday objects are the focus of Laurynas Navidauskas screenprints on paper. He creates purposefully ambiguous black-on-white line drawings, providing them with sometimes counterintuitive or surreal context of colour fills, patterns and gradients. Shogo Okada’s work is also informed by popular/traditional culture and the modern-day still life. He samples images from common objects and creates complex compositions that reduce them to their design basics. The primary focus of Yorodeo’s collaborative print work has been to explore the limits of two-dimensional hand-screenprinted images by utilizing the process of anaglyphic (red/blue) 3D image making. The prints range from landscapes of imagined worlds to more minimal, almost abstract images of base elements that comprise those worlds.

This exhibition is part of the Toronto Design Offsite Festival 2017 taking place on January 16–22, 2017.

 

 

Artists’ Biographies

Lorna Livey’s works on paper utilizing printmaking and mixed media have been exhibited in solo and
group shows across Canada, including the Burnaby Art Gallery, Whitby’s Station Gallery and the New
Brunswick Museum in Saint John. Her work is included in many corporate and public collections, most recently Capital One and the Department of Foreign Affairs. Well-known as a teacher and Master Printmaker, Livey has worked with Open Studio, Inner City Angels, community arts groups and individual artists. She has also written and illustrated three travel memoirs.

With a background in film and video, Laurynas Navidauskas started exploring print media after a workshop at Open Studio. He is currently an Open Studio member, working in screenprinting.

Shogo Okada, born in Japan, and eagerly transitioning to life in Canada, arrived in Toronto four years ago with his unique prints exploring the world of graphic comics and animated television series. Drawing from an array of sources, including Peanuts, Curious George, Babar and Phineas and Ferb among others, Okada hand draws, cuts, rearranges and prints graphic elements lifted from these series. While both a formal and technical exploration of his material process and content, the resulting work has a strong minimalist impact, utilizing fields of colour with familiar elements that shift locations through a body of work. Okada’s work is a fascinating glimpse into the considerations of an artist born and raised in the hyper-pop world of Japan. He manages to establish a connection between the state of contemporary comics and animation with a nod to the histories and ethos of both minimalism and pop art. Shogo Okada is courtesy of Wil Kucey Gallery.

Yorodeo is the name of the Halifax-based collaborative art partnership between Paul Hammond and Seth Smith. They began working together in 2003 because of a mutual interest in hand-screenprinted gig posters and fine art. Their work combines collage, drawing, photography and pattern making to create very graphic, information-rich images. Since 2008, the primary focus of their practice has been to explore the limits of two-dimensional hand-screenprinted images by utilizing the process of anaglyphic (red/blue) 3D image making. Their most recent work melds printmaking with sculpture, model making, photography and video.

Also the Open Studio Print Sales Gallery presents a special presentation and studio tour, Enhance Your Interiors with Original Fine Art Prints, January 21, 2017, 10 AM – 12 PM, showcasing a selection of corporate and residential interior design projects featuring prints by Open Studio Print Sales Gallery artists. Original prints will be on view to see first-hand the broad range of techniques, themes, and aesthetic approaches that can be found across the medium of printmaking. Some of the artists in Design in Printmaking will be in attendance.