Deenugaa Shan | Contributor
Featured image: Reimagine nature in a fantastic light with the latest student exhibit at The Gales Gallery by Marcia Villeneuve. | Fernando Leon
When you step into an art show, it’s like stepping into another world.
That’s what Marcia Villeneuve evokes with her art show Surreal Spaces. Recipient of the 2016 Willowdale Group of Artists Painting Award, which is awarded to distinguished upper-year visual arts students at York, Villeneuve is adept in creating beautiful stories through paint.
Stepping into The Gales Gallery, one isn’t quite sure what to feel as the installations are disorienting. As visitors enter the room and move from art piece to art piece, Villeneuve’s brilliance becomes evident as the space transports visitors from reality into a delightfully surreal world.
At first glance, the magical aura of Surreal Spaces appears to be contradictory to the minimalist style of Villeneuve’s art. The exhibit features only a few paintings slapped up onto blank white walls. Surrealist artists typically make use of unexpected juxtapositions, surprising elements and shocking reworkings of mundane objects.
Villeneuve cleverly achieves the contradiction between philosophy and dream, and expectation and reality through the critical engagement of space.
For Villeneuve, surrealism takes on a different meaning, symbolizing what is not normal.
“I like to put objects in a space that doesn’t make sense or where they don’t really belong there,” says Villeneuve.
“Like with all the dark images, giving them properties that they wouldn’t normally have. You’d never see a rainbow tree that’s glowing at night.”
“I get most excited about painting things that look realistic but have a surreal element,” shares Villeneuve. She sparks surrealist interest by playing with what visitors expect to experience when they enter Surreal Spaces versus what it is, resulting in a duality of transformation.
The stripped-down style of the exhibition forces visitors to engage more intimately with each work. The brushstrokes, colour scheme and subject choice become emphasized in the cumulative masterpiece that is Surreal Spaces.
Even though all the paintings share a realistic theme, no two are alike. Every painting is unique because of its complex colour patterns and where it takes you. Each painting tells its own story, but depending on the eye of the beholder, that story changes.
The three paintings all together, referred to by Villeneuve as a triptych, is a final realization of months of hard work.
“This triptych represents the places I call home. My entire life I have been moving back and forth between Toronto and North Bay. While they’re very different spaces, they have some similarities, including very similar beaches, so I chose to connect these two cities with an image of a beach in the centre panel.
“I wanted to add a surreal element by making the spaces look connected as a whole while also playing with the different times of day,” said Villanueva.
Surreal Spaces ran until Thursday, January 26, but those unable to experience the exhibit in person can visit Villeneuve’s website for an online gallery.
