Evan Penny

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Evan Penny, "(Old) Stretch #3," 2006

silicone, pigment, hair fabric, aluminum, 36.5" x 7.75" x 2.75"

Feeling like this guy these days: stretched to the limit, can’t focus, bewildered, and with dull skin?   Evan Penny’s  (Old) Stretch #3 sums  it up whether you're  25 or 105  - this is the look, this is the feel at the moment. TrépanierBaer is presenting this signature work by Evan Penny from 2006 in conjunction with his latest  portfolio of photographs titled Why Do You Peel from Myself? . Conceived in the studio within the context of his latest sculpture Hanging Marsyas and the artist's reflective Body Mirror wall reliefs,  these twisted, stretched, surreal reflections taken by the artist “become a kind of selfie” that call into question our relationship to the body and to the photographic image, and its disorienting and disembodying effect. Think of all the FaceTime and Zoom meetings you’ve participated in over the last year and the image you saw of your face reflected back to you in small or large screens, over, and over, and over again. 

Evan Penny was born in South Africa in 1953, and immigrated to Canada in 1964. In 1975 he graduated from the Alberta College of Art and Design, Calgary with an Honours Fine Art Diploma. Two years later, he returned to the Alberta College of Art and Design and completed Post-Graduate studies in sculpture. From his earliest sculptural busts in the 1970s through to his first nude sculptures in the early 1980s, Penny has devoted himself to an examination of how the concepts of sculptural realism have been influenced by classicism, romanticism, and - most importantly for the artist – by the advent of traditional and digital photography. Over the past fifteen years Penny has stated that his interest has been to explore the discrepancies between the way we might experience each other in real time and space and the way we might imagine the equivalent in an image.