Finding Pause, Finding Self
As I enter Galerie ERGA, the sound of Saint-Laurent Boulevard, of passing cars, of truck engines left running, of people talking over the ambient noise, becomes almost inaudible from behind the gallery’s tall windows. Instead, the gentle creaking of the gallery’s hardwood floors and the soft music playing in the background are the sounds that take over. The gallery is carefully lit, just enough to capture each work of art in its own light against the white, high-reaching walls. It’s in this space that artist Bob Venafro holds his current exhibition, About Time. Venafro began painting around the time of his retirement, and in this collection, he continues his work in landscape painting and use of oil paint. This time, however, Venafro’s paintings have a particular focus on arctic scenes. Although not all of the paintings displayed at ERGA are arctic landscapes, it’s these particular scenes, with their variegations of blue, turquoise and white, that begin the exhibition and invite the viewer into the gallery.
While the central focus of the exhibition is, as its title indicates, time, the inspiration for the collection originally stemmed from the word ipseity, selfhood. “Over the two years that I worked with that word,” Venafro tells me, “I took off hood, and I just took self.” The idea of self, he explains, helped him to become more calm and to allow the painting to evolve. “It really helped me focus on what it is that I wanted to do for this show, and this show is eclectic.”
As I make my way from painting to painting, the word eclectic seems to increasingly resonate with me. Each painting is its own. At the front of the gallery, the painting Quiet Interval welcomes the visitor with its soft yet striking teal pond; at the back of the gallery, Sunset, inspired by Saguenay landscapes, displays a range of colours that shift through different hues of purple, orange, blue, black, and green. The textured bark of the trees in Winter seems even sharper after the smooth brushstrokes that evoke the waves in Glimmering Calm. Miniature paintings with their bright colours draw me in close after the detailed, stretching branches featured in one of the collection’s largest paintings, Quietude. Accompanying each painting is a small description that not only communicates the work’s title and materials, but also aims to provide a glimpse into the artist’s process and guide the viewer in their own interpretation of the work. What intrigues me the most, however, isn’t the range of the paintings’ colours, textures and sizes. It’s that as I move through the gallery, I find colour where I least expect it: the surprising dash of yellow in Ethereal suggests sunlight on dark waves, the dark brown in Arctic Reverie gives beautiful depth to the painting’s light blue waters.
Photo by Micheline Nalette
The arctic scenes surprise me most in this way, in their individuality despite their overall similar colour scheme. Venafro describes the inspiration for these scenes as a trip that he took with his wife from Iceland to Barcelona. “That’s a bit where the arctic thing came from this time around,” he explains. It’s in this thing for arctic scenes that Venafro best displays his ability to capture movement, to make landscapes come alive. The movement of brush strokes in Mountains in Motion is what most clearly distinguishes it from Glimmering Calm: though the two are almost identical in colour scheme and composition, they appear as two entirely different paintings through the way their colours move. This idea of movement within nature feels central to About Time. “Permanence and impermanence,” reflects Venafro. “We’re not permanent. We don’t live forever on this planet. Nor does nature. [...] Over seventy-six years of life [...] you begin to think about that.” With each painting, I find myself also thinking about that, about movement and time and impermanence.
It seems fitting that the exhibition would be located on Saint-Laurent Boulevard, arguably one of the busier streets in Montreal. Some of those visiting About Time may have meticulously planned the date and time of their visit, others may have accidentally landed at the ERGA gallery while wandering along Saint-Laurent. Either way, this exhibition seems not only to ask visitors to think About Time, but also allows them to find pause in their own time, whether or not they had planned it. “The question with this show is how are you going to use your own time?, using nature as a metaphor,” says Venafro.
About Time succeeds in offering Montreal a space in which visitors can reflect on their own relationship to time through Venafro’s delicate depiction of nature as alive and in motion. I am most drawn to the subtlety found in each work in its unique texture, light and movement. Venafro’s paintings hold a nuance that invites visitors into quiet contemplation. About Time is exhibited at Galerie ERGA from June 30 to July 5 (see hours below), with an alcohol-free vernissage open to all on July 2 at 5pm.
WHAT: About Time
WHERE: Galerie ERGA, 6394 Boul. Saint-Laurent, Montreal, QC, H2S 3C4
WHEN: June 30 @ 2pm - 5pm, July 1-2 @ 10am - 5pm, July 3 @ 11am - 6:30pm,
July 4-5 @ 11am - 5pm. VERNISSAGE: July 2 @ 5pm
METRO: Beaubien (Orange)
DETAILS: Website for Bob Venafro, Singulart for Bob Venafro, Galerie ERGA
