BLACK BAY

BRENDAN FLANAGAN

FROM NOVEMBER 19TH TO DECEMBER 21ST
OPENING NOVEMBER 21ST, 2008 FROM 7-10PM

Brendan Flanagan has returned to Toronto from time spent in Berlin over the last year with his new exhibition Black Bay. Black Bay marks Flanagan’s second solo exhibition with LE Gallery and comes on the heels of having split his studio practice between Berlin and Toronto this past year. Taking inspiration from family history, Flanagan’s interest in exploring the psychological power of landscape now turns to the Hudson’s Bay Trading Post which employed his grandfather in northern Canada. Mythologizing the inhabitants and landscape of Black Bay, Flanagan explores the tensions and anxieties experienced between a vulnerable culture and an ominous environment. Flanagan has been included in the recently launched Magenta Foundation publication Carte Blanche 2, Painting, featuring 200 of Canada’s top painters of which Brendan is included with 78 other emerging artists. Of Flanagan’s work, Author and Advisor Clint Roenisch states, “Brendan Flanagan’s work is also distinct for how thoroughly it conveys the idea of paint as a toxic miasma, setting his scenes of cabins and hikers in congealed whorls and skeins of acidic colours.”