Nicole Ondre and Mina Totino: The Eyes Have Walls

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Photo: Stan Douglas, 2020.

Nicole Ondre and Mina Totino, "The Eyes Have Walls," 2020

The Eyes Have Walls: Nicole Ondre and Mina Totino

This exhibition features paintings and ceramic works by Vancouver-based artists, Nicole Ondre and Mina Totino. Ondre and Totino challenge the mechanical processes of their materials, and through their experimentation cause their artistic media to elude fixed forms.

Taken together, their paintings and ceramic works encourage a dialogue about the act of art-making. The layering, knotting, and shaping of their materials results in an amalgama on of different forms, united by elements of unpredictability in their making. At first glance, their materials are self-evident, but on closer inspection, surprises wait around every corner.

Nicole Ondre is a graduate of the Master of Fine Arts program of the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg, Germany. She has exhibited her work internationally, including projects at Hayaki Arti in Istanbul, Turkey, and Benzulli Ziegt in Dusseldorf, Germany, as well as in Vancouver at Or Gallery and Unit 17 and in Toronto at Diaz Contemporary. She ran the Exercise project space with Vanessa Disler in Vancouver from 2011 to 2013. Since 2010, she and Disler have collaborated as the project Feminist Land Art Retreat, and have exhibited widely in North America and Europe.

Mina Totino received a diploma in art from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 1982. Her work has been exhibited in Vancouver at the Belkin Gallery, Charles H. Scott Gallery, Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Contemporary Art Gallery, as well as the Oboro Gallery in Montreal, Diaz Contemporary in Toronto, Galerie Likofabrik in Berlin, Germany, and the Latvian Center of Contemporary Art in Riga, Latvia. In 2014, she received the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Founda on Viva Award.