JONATHAN FORREST: Material Resonance

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Jonathan Forrest, "Blue Blue Electric Blue," 2019

acrylic on canvas, 66" x 48"

opening reception: Saturday, May 25, 2 PM

Please join us on Saturday, May 25th to celebrate the opening of Jonathan Forrest’s latest exhibition, Material Resonance. The immersive and impactful selection of works in this exhibition are the latest creations of an artist whose practice is defined by both an intense focus, clarity, and concentration, as well as a wandering inquisitiveness. Active since the mid 1980s, Forrest's approach to abstraction over the past three decades charts a steady yet meandering evolution. Uncomfortable settling into one series or stylistic pigeonhole for too long, he regularly adjusts his course, shifting towards new lines of inquiry. In sequence, a logical, incremental progression comes into focus, a path of one thing leading to another, with the occasional leap for good measure.

From 2015 to 2018, Forrest narrowed his focus on a series of brightly coloured and meticulously executed geometric abstractions. Hard-edged shapes placed on saturated grounds were segmented with intersecting bands of colour built up through layer upon layer of semi-transparent veils. The works were clean and crisp, with sharp edges and perfectly uniform surfaces. Moving forward from this series, Forrest's most recent paintings continue to explore transparency and optical colour mixing, while mostly abandoning strongly defined shapes and figure-ground relationships. Utilizing the application techniques developed throughout his last series, these new works tease out the potential of his methods to play with the complexity and density of colour and tone without the regularity of parallel and perpendicular bands or the confines of a defined shape. Instead, the paintings have become fields of modulated colour with a different kind of impact: softer, quieter, more immersive and experiential than the pop and bang of the banded shape paintings. Utilizing a free-hand approach, these new works take Forrest's scrims of colour nearly to the edges of each painting, save for a small border of coloured ground. The edge of the paint in this zone is left irregular, not quite rough or jagged, but permeable, dissolving. Somewhat blurry, seemingly pixelated even, the paintings have an almost technological vibe; a visual vibration with an electrostatic sort of hum.

Jonathan Forrest is a Canadian artist who currently splits his studio time between Vancouver Island and small-town Saskatchewan. Forrest continues to garner attention and commercial success for his abstract paintings, with recent exhibitions in Vancouver, Edmonton, London, ON, and Art Toronto (Michael Gibson Gallery booth). He has exhibited his work across Canada and internationally for more than thirty years and his works can be found in numerous public and private collections.