The Sun Poured in Like Butterscotch
Curator: Les Ramsay

With: Sam Branden, Robert Erickson, Colleen Heslin, Lauren Luloff, Les Ramsay, Jonathan Ryan Storm, Angela Teng
Opening: Thursday March 14, 5:30 - 8:30pm
Exhibition: March 14 to April 20, 2019

Projet Pangée is pleased to present The Sun Poured in Like Butterscotch, an exhibition uniting the work of seven artists and curated Les Ramsay.

How happy is the transparent painting!
Are you upset by how cobwebby it is?
Does it tear you apart to see the painting so vaporous?

I cannot help but stop and look at the transparent painting.
Now limpid is just the thing
to get me wondering if the painting is diaphanous.

I saw the tactile draw of my generation destroyed,
how I mourned the crayon.
A crayon is tactual. A crayon is haptic;
a crayon is tangible, however.

The Sun Poured in Like Butterscotch is a hurly burly of colour field painting and domestic craft from seven artists with material-based practices relating to painting and collage. Working within and outside of the stretcher, and with a variety of materials, these artists use textile methods of construction like dyeing, staining, collaging, sewing, the building of custom supports, and the crocheting of ribbons of paint. These subtle and tactile methods of picture making draw attention to the perceived physicality of colour: of pigment resting on surface or chemically bonding to fiber. The range of surface texture upon each picture plane affects the overall reading, with the presence of natural fiber adding softness and infusing quality - an inevitable contrast to the hard plasticity of paint as medium. Tension and flow snicker at the push and pull; there’s something beyond depth on the picture plane here; we’re witnessing the smoke of an ancient nostalgia spread like a ribbon out of the window. — Les Ramsay

Sam Branden lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He received his BFA from the Columbus College of Art & Design in 2014. Branden has held a solo show at Quality Gallery (Oakland, CA, 2016), a two-person show at No Place Gallery (Columbus, OH, 2017), and participated in group shows at E.Tay Gallery (New York, NY, 2017), Skylab Gallery (Columbus, OH, 2018), and most recently at At Large Gallery (Brooklyn, NY, 2019) and Bible Gallery (New York, NY, 2019). Branden is a co-director and curator at Wick Gallery in Bushwick, Brooklyn. 

Robert Erickson has exhibited throughout the United States and abroad over the last 20 years. Recent group exhibitions include Museum of Contemporary Art - Tucson; 57w57Arts, New York, NY; Dropped Frames - Curated by JPW3, Elk Gallery, New York, NY; Accident Blackspot- Curated by Jim Lee, Freight+Volume, New York, NY; Accident Blackspot, Markus Winter Gallery, Berlin, Germany; and, The Lurking Hole Gallery, Nottingham, UK. He received a BFA from the University of Delaware, 1997. Robert currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Colleen Heslin is an artist and independent curator based in Vancouver. She has an MFA from Concordia University and is the winner of the 2013 RBC Painting Competition. Heslin’s most recent solo exhibitions were held at the Monte Clark Gallery (Vancouver, 2018) and the Esker Foundation (Calgary, 2016), with group exhibitions at the Power Plant (Toronto, 2018), the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery (Vancouver, 2018) and the Vancouver Art Gallery (Vancouver 2017). Her work has been exhibited and published in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

Lauren Luloff received her MFA from The Milton Avery College of Art, Bard College and her BFA from Pennsylvania State University. She currently has a solo show hung at Ceysson and Benetiere in Paris. Recent solo exhibitions have been with Ceysson and Benetiere, New York; Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton, NY; Galerie Bernard Ceysson, Luxembourg and Geneva, Switzerland; Marlborough Chelsea, New York; The Hole, New York, and Annarumma Gallery, Naples, Italy.  Luloff lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Les Ramsay was born in Vancouver and studied fine arts at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Universitat de Bellas Artes in Valencia (Spain); he completed his MFA at Concordia University in 2015. He currently has a solo exhibition titled The Adventures of Atrevida Reef, at Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran in Montreal (2019), and has recently shown work at A motion for a notion commotion, presented at Chernoff Fine Art in Vancouver (2018); Li Salay, at the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton (2018); and, MICRO-WAVE, at Mr. Lee’s Shed in Vancouver (2018). His works can be found in many private and corporate collections, such as The Claridge Collection, Medcan, the TD Bank and RBC collection.

Jonathan Ryan Storm received his BA in Metaphysics from Wheaton College in 2003. His recent solo exhibitions include Morgan Lehman Gallery in New York City; Cardoza, Menil Bookstore and David Shelton Gallery in Houston; and, Farewell Books in Austin. Group exhibitions include Big Medium in Austin; Circuit12 and Ware:Wolf:Haus in Dallas; The Brandon and David Shelton Gallery in Houston; Neuer Saarbrücker Kunstverein in Germany; and GoodPress in Scotland. He lives and works in Brattleboro, Vermont.

Angela Teng is an artist based in Vancouver, BC. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally, including in the exhibition Ambivalent Pleasures, at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Teng was a finalist for the RBC painting competition in both 2016 and 2017. She received her BFA from Emily Carr University in 2011.

Projet Pangée would like to acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country.