_edited.jpg){kind=small}
CHRISTOPHER PATCH
SEA HAG!
NOVEMBER 14 - DECEMBER 22, 2013
OPENING RECEPTION: THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2013 6 - 11 pm
Evans Contemporary is pleased to celebrate its first anniversary with SEA HAG! an exhibition of new paintings and monoprints by NY and Portland, Maine based painter, Christopher Patch. Please join us for a celebration and opening reception of this exciting exhibition on Thursday, November 14th starting at 6pm.
Patch's practice frequently utilizes print making techniques in the creation of his diverse paintings, collages, books and sculptures. His work develops from images and ideas tied to the jurisdiction of folk art, natural history, ornithology, modernism and nautical lore. In his exhibition at Evans Contemporary, Patch works with the silhouetted figure of the Sea Hag, Popeye's arch-nemesis from the 1930s comic strip. The imagery of the Sea Hag (specifically as embodied in the techniques of comics and printmaking) connects us to a romantic dream of a universal language that is used to construct a narrative of the artist as an outsider. The Sea Hag is a shape-shifting necromancer that, like an artist, uses the illusions of representation to charm the world to get what she wants. Recently transplanted from New York back to the costal environment of his home state of Maine, Patch has put himself on a cultural island to weave this story of isolation and otherness.
The images in this exhibition use direct printmaking techniques in a fluid manner. The pictures are woodblock-printed, stenciled and hand-painted on untreated canvas or paper, often folded and passed through the press multiple times. Evidence of the process is by no means concealed—fingerprints and mis-registrations are openly displayed. Patch’s continued investigation of such printmaking techniques creates images that codify the process of making, such as isolating an index of the wood grain in the representation. The results are direct and graphic while also atmospheric and nuanced. Painting, relief printmaking, and comic books are all fodder for Patch’s distinct image-making alchemy that creates stories about the alienation of the attempt to depict universal ideas in contemporary art.
CHRISTOPHER PATCH
Christopher Patch received his MFA from the School of the art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from Maine College of Art in Portland, Maine. In 2004 Patch studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
His extensive list of exhibitions include show at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, LACE in Los Angeles, CA, Pace University Art Gallery, NY, The Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, The Arsenal Gallery at Central Park, NY, The Ulrich Museum of Art in Wichita, KS, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Rubicon Gallery, Dublin, Ireland, Artissima in Turin, Italy, Northern Illinois University Art Gallery, The Evanston Art Center, Brooke Alexander Gallery, New York, NY, University of Nagoya, Japan and numerous exhibitions at Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago.
Patch has been awarded residencies at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, FL, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and the Atlin Centre for the Arts in British Columbia, Canada. He has been the recipient of the Joan Mitchell Grant, William Zorach Grant, and the Graduate Fellowship Grant, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Born in Falmouth, Maine, Christopher Patch has lived in Brooklyn NY for the last decade where he has focused on creating a diverse body of paintings, prints, collages, book-works, and sculptures, He has recently moved to coastal Maine where he has taken up residence in a studio on Peaks Island, close to Portland. Patch has also embraced his family's seafaring history and can often be found lobstering in the waters of Casco Bay.
EVANS CONTEMPORARY
302 PEARL AVE.
PETERBOROUGH, ON
K9H 5G5
705 874 6932
PAOLO FORTIN - GALLERY COORDINATOR
LAUREN TREGENZA - RESEARCH FELLOW