2024 | EVAN PENNY
MARSYAS AND THE VENETIAN MIRROR
TORONTO
Sept 14 - Oct 26, 2024
Curated by: Yves Trépanier

TrépanierBaer is delighted to announce Marsyas and the Venetian Mirror, a survey exhibition by the esteemed international Canadian artist Evan Penny. The exhibition is organized by TrépanierBaer in collaboration with Blouin | Division, Toronto. This is Evan Penny’s first solo exhibition of new work in Toronto since his exhibition at the Power Plant in 2002. Marsyas and the Venetian Mirror will feature thirty-six works, many of them new and not seen before. 

“The act of making new work suggests that one must leave what one has previously done to move to something new. In fact, that has not been my experience. Rather, I might find the new by going back into my history, which really means going back into myself, and pulling those threads that allow me to move forward.” —Evan Penny.

From the Marsyas cycle of work presented at the Biennale di Venezia in 2017 through to Penny’s latest gold-plated bronze body forms, AI generated works, and recent photographs, the exhibition will present works by one of the world’s preeminent sculptors, Evan Penny, and his on-going investigation of the human body and how we, the viewer, relate to it.

Evan Penny was born in South Africa in 1953, and immigrated to Canada in 1964. In 1975 he graduated from the Alberta College of Art and Design, Calgary with an Honours Fine Art Diploma. Two years later, he returned to the Alberta College of Art and Design and completed Post-Graduate studies in sculpture. From his earliest sculptural busts in the 1970s through to his first nude sculptures in the early 1980s, Penny has devoted himself to an examination of how the concepts of sculptural realism have been influenced by classicism, romanticism, and - most importantly for the artist – by the advent of traditional and digital photography. Over the past fifteen years Penny has stated that his interest has been to explore the discrepancies between the way we might experience each other in real time and space and the way we might imagine the equivalent in an image.

Recent international exhibitions include: Evan Penny: Ask Your Body at the Chiesa San Samuele, Venice, Italy (2017);  a touring 12-year survey titled Evan Penny RE FIGURED at: Kunsthalle Tübingen, Germany (2011); Museum Der Moderne, Salzburg Austria (2012); MARCA, Cantanzaro, Italy (2012); Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2012-2013); a touring group exhibition titled RESHAPED REALITY- 50 Years of Hyperrealistic Sculpture at Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, Spain (2016); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, Mexico (2016); ARKEN Museum of Modern Art, Denmark (2017); National Gallery of Australia, Canberra Australia (2017/2018); Kunsthal Rotterdam, The Netherlands (2017); HUMAN SCALE at the National Gallery of Canada in 2016 and THE LOOKING GLASS, at the Art Gallery of Alberta, Canada, in 2017.

Read Kate Taylor's review of Evan Penny: Marsyas and the Venetian Mirror in The Globe and Mail.