Andrew Valko: "Alone Together"

November 21 - December 5 

×

Expand

Andrew Valko, "Dusk to Dawn," Acrylic on Panel, 27 x 29 in., 2015

Andrew Valko,"Dusk to Dawn," Acrylic on Panel, 27 x 29 in., 2015

In "Alone Together," Andrew Valko continues his suite of paintings that challenges the very act of looking. In his drive-in theater scenes, Valko highlights the disparate experience of romantic projection and celebrity worship set amidst the banal and everyday; the flatness of the prairie landscape attesting to the mundane bordering on wasteland. As Valko confronts us with our own gaze through his own obsessive voyeuristic rendering of the female figure, it forces us to ask ourselves, what does it mean to look? What do we see and what does that say about ourselves? In Alone Together, looking becomes a mirror that confronts us with our cultural condition; our own tendencies to desire, fantasize, romanticize, fetishize and insist on living within a world of images. Such a mirror culminates in a tension between the realism of the painting with the superficiality of illusion in which the world of images is constructed.

About the Artist:

Born 1957 in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Came to Canada in 1968. Received his Diploma in Graphic Design and Applied Arts from the Red River Community College in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Studied printmaking at Yoshida Hanga Academy in Tokyo, Japan. He was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts in 1995.

Exhibition credits include numerous national and international solo and group shows in Canada, USA, Germany, Japan and Taiwan. He has done commissions for Canada Post Corporation and Royal Canadian Mint, and was commissioned by the The University of Manitoba to paint a portrait of the Chancellor Harvey Secter and the Manitoba Government to paint a portrait of premier Gary Filmon and Gary Doer, and the Speaker of the House Louise Dacquay, Deni Rocan and George Hicks. In 2009 he was a winner of the Kingston Prize, Canada’s national portrait competition.

His work is represented in a wide range of public, corporate and private collections, these include: The Canada Council Art Bank, Ottawa, Ontario; Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg, Manitoba; University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba; Memorial University of Newfoundland Art Gallery, St. Johns, Newfoundland; The Claridge Collection / Bronfman Collection, Montreal, Quebec; Canada Post Corporation, Ottawa, Ontario; Assante Asset Management Ltd., Winnipeg, Manitoba; Investors Group, Winnipeg, Manitoba; PriceWaterHouse Cooper, LLP, Vancouver, B.C.; Esso Petroleum,Calgary, Alberta; The Nickle Art Museum, Calgary,Alberta; Via Rail Canada, Inc., Montreal, Quebec; Wajima Holdings, Ltd., Calgary, Alberta; Suncor, Inc., Fort McMurray, Alberta; Burnet; Abex Financial Corp., Calgary, Alberta; Tecbau Techhnology, West Germany; Faitwood Foods Ltd., Hong Kong; West Coast Hotel Corporation, Seattle, Washington; The Royal Canadian Mint, Ottawa, Ontario; and Manitoba Hydro, Winnipeg, Manitoba.