Currently on show at Galerie Trois Points are two incredible artists with divergent styles that express their own unique vision. Scott Everingham is presented in his solo show entitled Until Dust and Olga Chagaoutdinova in her installation Un-Raveling.
Everingham is a Toronto-based artist whose talents have established him as one Canada’s well-known artist. Having earned his BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University and his MFA from the University of Waterloo – where he is currently teaching, Everingham has been featured extensively throughout Canada, the United States and Europe.
As compared to his previous creations, this show features Everingham’s most recent work on large canvases which provide a suitable space for abstract motifs that are suspended in controlled burst of movement. With large brushstrokes and contrasting colours, random shapes and lines are thrown together in a non-existent world creating architectural designs of multiple dimensions. In this collection, the artist experiments with the idea of creating a canvas in a day which lends a certain immediacy to the nature of his work.
The backgrounds, which are saturated with thick layers of paint incorporate a combination of muted tones and a dégradé of colour to create a sense of depth that allows Everingham to explore the relationship between disjointed marking and negative space. His work draws you in and surrounds in an altered dimension frozen in time.
Based in Montreal, Russian born artist Olga Chagaoutdinova finds her voice of expression in photo and video essays that explore the domestic mindset, globalization and suffering in contemporary society. Her work has garnered international recognition and has secured her placed in privately owned collections by Hydro Québec, The Far East Museum of Fine Arts in Khabarovsk, Russia, the Kebola Collection in Havana, Cuba, and the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Quebec.
In her presentation Chagaoutdinova has chosen to work with video. In a sequestered area of the gallery, a large screen projects the face of Chagaoutdinova which is striking due in part to her pale blue eyes and fiery red hair. In this video, the artist is staring directly at the viewer during the entire length of the performance. As she stares blatantly at the audience, her facial expression undergoes transformation as she is smiling and pleasant at the beginning of the video, then starts crying with her lips quivering with morose sadness and then emerges as locked in mortal fear and worry as her gaze widens in absolute fright. While we are easily transfixed by her facial expression, a number of disembodied hands are constantly playing in her hair, running through the fiery strands of red. Sometimes these hands are kind and gentle as they caress her face and lightly place her hair in a attractive position at other times, the hands are rough as the grab her chin and forcibly shake her face around with disdain.
When I consider the title of this show, I am lead to think that the Chagaoutdinova could easily represent the viewer who at times may feel like the world is at odds with them. The average person may feel manipulated by others as represented by the hands in this video. Depending on our moods we can be happy at one moment and vulnerable the next. Who has never felt that the world is crazy and felt that life was ‘unraveling’ right before their eyes?
This latest work of Chagaoutdinova is visceral and challenges our idea of our place in a discordant world.
Galerie Trois Points, espace 520

Scott Everingham – Until Dust
Olga Chagaoutdinova – Un-Ravelling
February 23 – March 30, 2013
www.galerietroispoints.cqc.ca
