Jay Senetchko: Rich Dark Soil

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Jay Senetchko, "The Best of Life," 2018

oil on canvas

Reception: Saturday January 19, 2019 12 to 4 pm

Rich Dark Soil is an exhibition that will be held at the Deer Lake Art Gallery featuring the work of Jay Senetchko, and is hosted and organized by the Burnaby Arts Council.

Rich Dark Soil refers to the practice and heritage of artist Jay Senetchko. Senetchko is of Canadian (Albertan) and Ukrainian descent; and although he is most easily defined as a painter, he situates his practice in a broader material context and process, which includes photography, digital media, sculptures, performance and installations.

In Senetchko’s primary medium of oil on canvas he operates as a figurative realist creating narrative-based paintings. His subject matter, featuring elements of his personal and cultural background, exposes him as an artist with a nostalgic and romantic temperament. However, it is his intention through the use of these vehicles to reveal the tension he perceives within sentimentality and the inherent dangers of nostalgia.

Ultimately, Jay Senetchko is a storyteller; and he mobilizes his multidisciplinary practice to best combine medium and message to tell his tales. In order to spread these stories as far as possible, Senetchko creates spectacle-based exhibitions in an effort to insert fine art back into the social fabric by engaging the public at large, not only the academic and invested. Rich Dark Soil is the first exhibition of the artist’s career to showcase the methodology and rationale behind his storytelling.