Megan Dyck | Apertures

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Megan Dyck, “Lorem Gypsum,” 2023

acrylic on birch panel, 30x30 inches (courtesy of the Gallery)

Opening Reception: Saturday, February 10th, 1-3pm.

Newzones is thrilled to announce Apertures, Calgary-based visual artist and academic Megan Dyck’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. We are additionally excited to welcome Dyck into the gallery on Saturday, February 10th for an artist talk at 2pm.

Dyck’s figurative imagery investigates the ubiquity of photography and aesthetic qualities of glitch that occur in digital and analog communication as metaphors for psychological isolation, loneliness, and desire. Transcribing benign and dramatic inadvertent visual flaws observed in contemporary and historical lens-based images of people, her paintings and drawings collectively address instances of fragmentation, warping, distortion, and double-exposure as emblems for the incongruousness of the human psyche. Co-opting pixelated selfies, frozen excerpts of online meetings, found film negatives, and lagging video-clips encountered on social media as primary visual referents, Dyck’s work attempts to convey the unease of being a consumer of images in the digital age, moving perpetually between a sense of connection and alienation.

The term aperture references attributes foundational to the two abiding preoccupations of Dyck’s studio research: colour and portraiture. While the optical phenomenon of colour perception is constituted by the opening through which light travels: a camera, or pupil; the human face is a consortium of portals. Both comprise holes which dilate and contract, transmitting and receiving information. In this body of paintings, Dyck finds interest in uniting fragments of faces and chroma. Depicting the face as a series of isolated monochromatic elements, its features rely on neighboring colour fields and painterly mark-making to signify mood and aura. Simultaneously sensual and oblique, these floating disembodied facial apertures occupy taciturn, dazed, and enamored zones harkening daydream reveries and semi-trance states.

Dyck holds a BFA in Painting from AUArts and earned an MFA in Visual Arts at the University of Victoria. In addition to her own studio practice, Dyck has worked as an educator and researcher for the last 10 years, the majority of which have been at AUArts (formerly ACAD), teaching drawing, painting and colour theory. Dyck has been awarded Individual Faculty Research Grants from the AUArts Professional Affairs Committee in 2017, 2022 and 2023, and the Visual Arts Individual Project Grant from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

The exhibition will be on view from February 10th to March 2nd, 2024.