Z Art Space is delighted to present its summer group exhibition Dropping You Off in Sunshine, featuring six emerging Canadian artists Amélie Jodoin, Andrée-Anne Mercier, Dan Climan, Gabriela Avila-Yiptong, Robin Crofut-Brittingham, and Roxane Fiore. The exhibition addresses a familiar yet distant sense of togetherness in light of the current global context through themes of nostalgia, memory, ambiguity, and belonging. As illustrated from its title, positivity and playfulness are at the forefront of the exhibition as we hope to rejoice in a newly-found sense of gathering and celebration, emblematic of a true summer.

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Influenced by contemporary-retro Japanese popular imagery, Andrée-Anne Mercier explores the daily encounters of the mundane and the everyday, especially in relation to her personal journeys in Hawaii, Japan, and Montreal in the last decade. Nostalgia-ridden, her delightfully-colorful compositions seek to reveal an instantly soothing ambiance, while echoing individual and collective memories from our own voyages. 

Amélie Jodoin’s playful, mystery-infused compositions exude playfulness, while conveying distinctly ambiguous elements that defy a certain logic or linear narrative. Exploring the metamorphosis of landscapes and her immediate surroundings, Jodoin’s works unpacks the pictorial and hierarchical qualities of her environment, while inserting familiar yet seemingly disparate elements, as if by chance, to create new storylines.

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Dan Climan’s work explores the simple, quotidian moments as a vehicle to explore notions of subjectivity and escapism. Informed by the humble appeal of twentieth-century America, Climan’s practice references the bold yet succinct signage of an analog era. Gabriela Avila-Yiptong’s work furthers on the themes of nostalgia and memory using Western conventions of both landscape and abstract painting, to address the loose definition of place and cultural belonging. Distorting the landscape to the point that it becomes unidentifiable, she aims to mimic the instability of memory and the precarity of history, to suggest by extension the ephemeral nature of cultural identity.

Drawing inspiration from mythology, science fiction, current events, and personal history, Robin Crofut-Brittingham’s work grows from a fascination with ways in which humans interact with the natural world. Through the creation of fantasy worlds and beings, her finely detailed drawings reimagine concepts of natural disasters, evolution, and extinction, to hint towards a new and harmonious order of coexistence. 

Roxane Fiore’s lyrical compositions move from the tangible world into an illusionary one, following concepts of spontaneity and expressiveness set forth by the Automatistes. Intentionally ambiguous, abstract or even incomplete, such pieces advocate for a deliberate act of looking, rather than passively seeing, thereby inviting the viewer to rediscover the everyday and find beauty in the banal and the ordinary. 

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ABOUT

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Andrée-Anne Mercier (b. 1991) obtained a Bachelor’s in visual and media arts from UQAM in 2015. She undertook two artist residencies in Japan, Studio Kura (2016) and AIRY (2017). Her work includes different mediums such as painting, installation, sculpture, 3D modeling, animation and video games.

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Amélie Jodoin (b. 1988) obtained a Bachelor’s in visual and media arts from UQAM in 2016. She recently exhibited at Tub Hackney in London (UK), la Foire d'art contemporain de Saint-Lambert, and others. 

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Dan Climan (b. 1987) received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver. His latest exhibitions include Anteism Project Space, Emerald Gallery, and others.

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Gabriela Avila-Yiptong (b. 1991) obtained her BFA from University of Ottawa in 2016. Her works have exhibited at City Hall Art Gallery (Ottawa, ON), Articule (Montreal, QC), and others. She will pursue her MFA at Goldsmiths University of London this Fall. 

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Robin Crofut-Brittingham (b. 1989) received her BA from Bard College with a focus in Poetry and Art History and her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in California. She has previously exhibited at the Sandisfield Arts Center (MA, USA), Foreman Art Gallery (Sherbrooke, QC), and Galerie Youn, among others. 

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Roxane Fiore (b. 1993) obtained her BFA in Painting and Drawing from Concordia University in 2018. She completed an artist residency in Iceland in 2019, and will participate in the Lademoen Kunstnerverksteder residency in Norway in 2022. 

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