Summary
Geoff McFetridge unveils a new collection of paintings for a show titled 'Grasslands' at Toronto's Cooper Cole Gallery.The exhibition features rolling landscapes inspired by the Canadian prairies where the artist was raised.
There’s a quiet power lingering throughout Geoff McFetridge’s latest body of work at Toronto’s Cooper Cole Gallery. Channeling the charged stillness of the late Alex Colville’s photorealistic paintings, McFetridge brings a similar sense of motionlessness to the rural scenes and tranquil environments of Grasslands. The exhibition features rolling landscapes inspired by the Canadian prairies where the artist was raised.
It's easy to slip into a dreamlike state while looking at "Afloat," an oil and gesso painting depicting a figure lying in a soft field of grass, perhaps taking an afternoon nap or simply gazing blissfully at the sky. Another work, titled "Sleepers," shows pickup trucks and boxy SUVs forming a traffic circle in the middle of an expansive field. Have the vehicles been abandoned, or are their drivers endlessly circling without any clear destination?
The surrealism running through the works is understated but deliberate, tapping into a nostalgia for life’s simpler, smaller moments. Spending time with these scenes offers viewers a brief sense of solace from the relentless noise of the present.
“This new body of work extends McFetridge’s ongoing investigation into perception, memory, and the spaces between observation and imagination. Figures, animals, architecture, and landscape elements occupy scenes that feel at once recognizable and elusive, suspended between lived experience and dream,” the gallery said in a statement.
Grasslands is on view at Cooper Cole Gallery through September 5.
Cooper Cole Gallery
1134 Dupont Street
Toronto, ON M6H 2A2
Canada
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