Michael Hermesh: Metaphors for Liars

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Photos courtesy of Petley Jones Gallery

Opening reception Saturday, June 21st, 2025 from 1 – 4 pm

Exhibition: June 21 – July 9

In Metaphors for Liars, Canadian contemporary artist Michael Hermesh delivers a powerful meditation on the slipperiness of truth, the theatre of human experience, and the role of the artist as both witness and storyteller. Known for his richly narrative sculpture and painting, Hermesh builds symbolic worlds where fictional dramas more accurately express reality than any literal account.

Drawing from his belief that “truth is an orphan waiting to be named—once named, it becomes a lie,” Hermesh positions art not as explanation but as an act of seeing. The works in this exhibition are not answers; they are metaphors—flawed, layered, and alive. Figures inhabit moments of tension, irony, and vulnerability, embodying the contradictions and revelations of lived experience. These are not depictions of life as grace, but as a persistent, dynamic struggle, in which integrity and awareness serve as our rare constants.

Metaphors for Liars invites viewers into a space where meaning is always shifting, and where the act of creation becomes both an assertion of truth and an admission of its limits.