This Burning Liquid Being That I Am / Pink Ruffles in Time 

 Dual exhibitions by Gillian Frise & Peter B Hastings 

 Exhibition runs March 22nd to April 15th 2023 

 Opening Reception: Saturday March 25th, 1pm to 8pm

"Every normal human being (and not merely the 'artist') has an inexhaustible store of buried images in his subconscious, it is merely a matter of courage or liberating procedures ... of voyages into the unconscious, to bring pure and unadulterated found objects to light"

Max Ernst 

Image: Gillian Frise, acrylic on cardboard, 12" x 12" 

MY CULT LEADER

 Exhibition by John Nobrega

 Exhibition runs Feb 22nd to March 11th 2023 

 Opening Reception: Saturday Feb 25th, 1pm to 8pm

The new exhibition by John Nobrega, My Cult Leader, is comprised of two discrete but related bodies of work. A series of text-based paintings based on soft-core magazines and exploitation film posters from the 1970’s, and a group of landscapes with palm trees inspired by the orange sunset mural in Franks office in the 1983 Brian Depalma film Scarface.

These small mixed media paintings on canvas and panel, interrogate the relationship between figuration and abstraction, text and material, Art and bad taste. The artist was fascinated by the way fonts, phrases and graphics from cheap pulp sources suggested a late-twentieth-century cultural anthropology of sex and death. Out of context and often incorporated into dense abstraction, these references still retain their transgressive charge. 

The palm tree paintings explore a similar dichotomy, expressed in the famous Scarface tagline “the world is yours”: a version of the American Dream that wallows in profanity and excess, ending ultimately in a massacre. Some of these pieces are sensitively rendered, others are shadowy silhouettes on an abstract ground. A few suggest a hazy 70’s Hollywood romanticism, while others show palm trees burning in broad daylight. 

RADIANT FLUX

 Augmented Reality Exhibition by Jenn E Norton

 Exhibition runs Feb 4th to Feb 18th 2023 

Jenn E Norton is an artist using time-based media to create immersive, experiential installations using stereoscopic, interactive video, animation, augmented reality, geolocative sound, and kinetic sculpture. Often using video as a starting point within her process, her imaginative compositions use a combination of pre-cinema and contemporary display technologies while exploring the blurring boundaries of virtual and physical realms. Norton’s recent animations and augmented reality apps draw upon her interest in the ways in which information is exchanged between humans, technology, and plants. Current research areas within Norton’s practice explore the use of metaphor in physics as a conceptual genesis, communicative device, poetic practice, and demonstrative application of technological and natural phenomena. Norton has shown her work nationally and internationally, with recent exhibitions in Nuit Blanche (2022, Toronto), Platforms (Athens), and Berlin (public augmented reality series), and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Visual Arts at York University and is an Assistant Professor in Film + Media at Queen’s University.

Overseas Conscience / Orange Crush

 Dual exhibitions by Ron Loranger & Rod Grigor 

 Exhibition runs Jan 7th to Jan 28th 2023 

 Opening reception Jan 14th, 1pm to 8pm 

“Everything is Dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled.”

The Principle of Polarity

The Kybalion

Image: 'Crushed Cans' 50" x 40", Acrylic on Canvas, Rod Grigor 

VICTORY OVER THE SUN 2

                                                           TORONTO DEC 7TH - JAN 7TH

Andreas Golder cannibalizes the history of art, filtering it through the lenses of nightlife and pop culture to create nihilistic figural paintings dealing with the medium’s “eternal subjects”—love, decay, and the circle of life. 

The Berlin artist creates monstrous characters that call to mind the work of Francis Bacon—grotesques painted in his signature pink that combine notes of Rembrandt, Rubens, Manet and Matisse with a slaughterhouse sensibility. 

He works with a soundtrack of death metal music or Baroque opera to find a place of meditation as he paints portraits of his friends and himself, often in images that question his role within the continuum of art history. Such sinister forms are also present in his sculptures, which he calls memorials to the lowest classes.

​

Image detail: ‘Destroyed Sun’ - Andreas Golder

PAPER TRAIL$

            Ron Loranger, Nicholas Di Genova, John Nobrega, Romas Astrauskas, Matt Crookshank, Margaret Glew, Andrew Ooi & Stephanie Cormier

                                            Toronto Oct 19 - Nov 19 2022

This group exhibition highlights contemporary artists who utilize paper as a site of rigorous formal and conceptual inquiry through direct manipulation and engagement with its materiality. The exhibition includes work by Ron Loranger, Nicholas Di Genova, John Nobrega, Romas Astrauskas, Matt Crookshank, Margaret Glew, Andrew Ooi & Stephanie Cormier. 

Paper, the traditional support of drawing, came to occupy a particular position in conceptual and minimalist practices during the 1960s and 1970s with the rising interest in process and materials. Given the ubiquity and malleability of the medium, artists have continued to interrogate its fundamental properties, formal qualities, and its broader artistic and cultural associations. As the title of the exhibition suggests, many of the works on view evidence the journey and active hand of the artist on and within their very surface, thereby complicating notions of drawing as necessarily dictated by conventional modes of mark-making or graphic lines.

Image: ‘Untitled’ ink on paper, John Nobrega

ART TORONTO

John Kissick, Matt Crookshank, Michael Stecky, Melissa Steckbauer & Drew Simpson

Toronto Oct 27 - Oct 30 2022

Art Toronto 2022 featured 90+ galleries from across Canada, the US and abroad. 

Canada's art fair presented 20 installations and project spaces, a curated exhibition space and a full program of talks and tours. 

GIRLHOOD

Sarah Sproule

Opening Sep 17, 1-8pm

Toronto Sep 15 - Oct 15 2022

Sarah Sproule is an emerging artist and arts administrator with a BFA in Studio Arts and a BA in Art History from McMaster University. Sarah works primarily in sculpture, printmaking, and the casting and mould-making process. Their work explores the relationship between the abjected body and their experience of fatness, disability, and queerness and the intersections that exist between them.

​

Image: Triptych ‘Hide & Seek’ mixed materials  on wood

THE WILD KINDNESS

SOLO EXHIBITION BY DREW SIMPSON

Toronto AUG 17 - SEPT 3 2022

​

I wrote a letter to a wildflower

On a classic nitrogen afternoon

Some power that hardly looked like power

Said, I'm perfect in an empty room

Four dogs in the distance

Each stands for a kindness, yeah

Bluebirds lodged in an evergreen altar

I'm gonna shine out in the wild kindness

I'm gonna shine out in the wild kindness

I'm gonna shine out in the wild kindness

And hold the world to its word

Excerpt from ‘The Wild Kindness’ by Silver Jews 

Image: Man After Man No. 4, Acrylic on Plywood, 24" x 24"

UNDER THE HAPPENSTANCE BRIDGE

Laurie Skantzos and Ian Leach

Toronto Jul 27 - Aug 13 2022

​

As two artists sharing their lives together, Ian and Laurie employ different physical approaches to their work, but share a common exploration of ideas within set parameters.

Ian works with salvaged findings - favouring cardboard, reclaimed wood and rescued house paint. The works are created with no preconceived idea before entering the studio, and have a physicality and immediacy to them. Laurie works with repeated, templated forms, exploring endless colour relationships and textures. Her work has evolved from assemblages created from detritus strewn on the studio floor and mounted on shaped plywood. They have been steadily refined over the past three years and are now painted directly on the wood.  Both artists' work retain an imperfection and rawness that references their beginnings. They offer a gentle invitation to be present with each piece and its surroundings. 

​

Image: Work by Laurie Skantzos

APOPHENIA ZEPHYR NO. 8

Joe Becker, John Rogers, Charlie Visconage, Matt Crookshank, Cameron Wylie, Tyler Armstrong, Jonah Strub, John Kissick & James Hiyme Brummett

Toronto Jul 6 - Jul 23 2022 

Apophenia Zephyr is an ongoing series of group exhibitions by The Drey set on exploring the aesthetic whiffs that emanate from mistakenly meaningful connections between unrelated things.

​

Image: John Rogers

A SEAT AT THE TABLE

Solo exhibition by Cameron Wylie

Toronto Jun 15 - Jul 2 2022

Each seat at the kitchen table is an invitation. An empty chair calls for us to settle in and enjoy a meal. The other vacant seats ask for company, making the kitchen table an inherently communal space. Whether it be sipping a morning coffee, or sitting down for an intricate appetizer, dinner and dessert, a set table beckons us to enjoy one another’s company. Breaking bread together transforms the mundane and repetitive practice of eating into a transcendent ritual. Repeated differently with each dinner, the procession of a meal is spiritual simply through being together. The rites of eating connect us to one another – not by the specific food that is served, but through the conversations between bites, and the love that goes into preparing food for friends and family. The artwork in A Seat at the Table speaks to this sense of intimacy, and evoke the spiritual potentials of convening to eat together. These paintings motion for viewers to pull up a seat at the table, relax, and enjoy one another’s company.

Text by Hailey Kobrin

THE WISDOM OF IMPERFECTION

An Exhibition by Romas Astrauskas

Toronto May 25 - Jun 11 2022 

I tend to use found materials in my practice, worn and weathered things that visually reveal an obvious temporal history. Often my ensuing decisions and choices are informed or influenced by these arbitrary elements of degradation. My pursuit is to make something elegant, meaningful or poetic out of something that is superficially very crude and simple. To disregard fussiness and achieve results with a minimum display in an effort to frame and highlight the wisdom and truth found in imperfection. 

​

image: Romas Astrauskas

DOUBLE RAINBOW

Solo exhibition by Michael Stecky

Toronto May 4 - May 21 2022

The Drey Gallery, Toronto presents a collection of new sculptural works from artist Michael Stecky.

Jigsaw puzzles, before completion exist in an abstracted state with an embedded set of rules for transformation into a photographic image. Stecky’s series of sculptural paintings or assemblages explore the idea of an alternative organization of puzzle pieces. The overpainted puzzle images influence the artwork’s organization, acting as a schematic for a new work. The repetition of pattern and colour creates a magnetic energy below the surface. The compositions read at once within the tradition of abstract modernist paintings but also suggest textile works or the modular nature of data streams. The exhibition title, considers the premise of the double rainbow being a rainbow and its shadow self, composed of both intense colour and monochromatic black or dark elements. 

​

Image: Detail from 'MURMURATION'

mixed media sculpture

                Found objects, spray-paint, wood                 

IT'S AN INSIDE JOB

New Work by Michael Nathaniel Green

Toronto Apr 13 - Apr 30 2022

Much of our existence overwhelms, bewilders, and causes us to function on auto pilot. Whether I want it to be or not the surreal is at the foundation of my work. My first hand experience of psychosis has revealed to me that there is so much more to reality than what we take in from our five senses. This invisible world is something I want to touch in my work and immerse the viewer in. I want to evoke the question, “What exactly is going on here?” like a bewildering still life.  By emphasizing the relationship of the in-between; the objects and their placement unfold a poetic dialogue that points to the invisible. The objects become more of potentialities than solid objects with strong hints of the Ephemeral lingering in the work. These Ephemeral moments in the invisible world point to emotions, fragility, and mental health, all themes I use in my work. 

​

Image: Detail from 'Invisible Offering' mixed media sculpture

MY WILL IS GOOD

                                          Solo exhibition by John Nobrega

Toronto Mar 26 - Apr 9 2022

“My Will is Good” an exhibition of new paintings by John Nobrega, takes the form of 12 portraits of Catholic Nuns, each in a state of heightened ecstatic experience. The individual Nuns, depersonalized in their traditional habits become icons of grief, ecstasy, or rage, respectively. The imagery for these portraits is drawn from Nunsploitation films , a genre of primarily European soft-core exploitation films that peaked in the 1970’s.  The plot of these films generally describe  a downward spiral, wherein the Sisters of a convent descend into decadence, madness and violence. Nobrega isolates these profane images, and in painting them in the mode of Classical European Religious Art, restores them to the status of Sacred Iconography.

The Drey Toronto, 1229A Woodbine Ave, M4C 4E1, East York

​

Image: 'Untitled' 9"x12" oil on canvas

I’M A TERRIBLE PERSON AND EVERYBODY KNOWS IT

New Work by Kineko Ivic

Toronto Mar 2 - Mar 19 2022

Kineko Ivic is a Toronto-based multi disciplinary artist and curator, currently  creating hybrid works that fluctuate between figurative and abstraction. 

Ivic’s current exhibition at The Drey titled ‘I’M A TERRIBLE PERSON AND EVERYBODY KNOWS IT’ is a series of paintings that depict personages that he refers to as ‘Goblins’ 

Each Goblin carries an emotive text across their torso, usually derived from a pop  culture limerick. 

Greener Pastures gallery was the brainchild of Ivic which for over half a decade put on some of Toronto’s most diverse and well received international exhibitions. 

Apart from exhibiting others works across Canada, USA and Europe, Ivic’s art has been featured at Andrew Kreps Gallery NYC, Angell Gallery Toronto, Anne deVillipouix Paris, Gavin Brown’s Passerby NYC and Freight and Volume NYC. 

All paintings, oil and acrylic on canvas, 

​

Hearts

16” x 20"

Oil and acrylic on canvas 

WILDING

Solo exhibition by Melissa Steckbauer

Through her work, the artist, reiki teacher and lifelong student of metaphysics-Melissa Steckbauer seeks to increase possibilities of intimacy and communication by emphasizing the ecstasy of everyday human experience. 

Steckbauer was a member of the collaborative artist network ƒƒ, and founding director of the exhibition space, The Wand, she now runs The Sensortorium and lives and works in Berlin. For the last several years – and after a comprehensive focus on painting – she has been developing a body of work on paper, exploring all of the facets and complexities of human sexuality through this medium.

Opening reception, Saturday February 12th, 1pm - 7pm

( Refreshments generously provided by our friends at Great Lakes Brewery ) 

The Drey Toronto, 1229A Woodbine Ave, M4C 4E1, East York 

Image: 'Untitled' 9 1/2" x 7", acrylic on paper

SUDDEN DEATH

New works by Tyler Armstrong

Tyler Armstrong is a Canadian artist enveloped in highly expressive figurative and still life acrylic and oil based paintings, collages and drawings.  His painting ‘Hypocrite’ was chosen by Spanish publisher, Fulgencio Pimentel, to be featured on the cover of author Ruben Lardin’s latest novel, “La hora atomica” (The Atomic Hour). He has showcased work in solo and group exhibitions in Toronto, Los Angeles, Ottawa, Mississauga, Hamilton and London. 

Opening reception, Saturday January 15th, 1pm - 6pm

( Refreshments generously provided by our friends at Great Lakes Brewery ) 

The Drey Toronto, 1229A Woodbine Ave, M4C 4E1, East York 

Image: 'Birds of a feather' 10" x 8", acrylic on canvas 

UNCOMMON DENOMINATOR

The Drey gallery is excited to announce its expansion from Berlin to Toronto this December with our kick off exhibition featuring the works of local multi disciplinary artist Matt Crookshank. 

Crookshank’s new macabre digital series ‘Uncommon Denominator’ will be housed simultaneously at both Drey locations in an effort to bridge the distances, both physical and metaphysical between On and Off.

Matt Crookshank is a guerrilla ontologist, gonzo alchemist and multi-disciplinary artist living and working in Toronto. His practice fearlessly encompasses paint, drawing, performance, design, and Emmy award nominated digital animation and effects. An enfant terrible sprung from the Queen West art scene of the early oughties, Crookshank lives to collaborate, break molds, and take risks, applying a gleefully slapstick contemporary art sensibility to perennial themes such as death, art, love, trauma, and loss. Part Jokester, part shaman, Crookshank intrepidly follows his artistic intuition wherever it may lead, creating wild painted and digital abstracts, ribald performance, fluid drawings and intensely detailed and painterly digital montages. In the past he has worked with General Hardware Contemporary and Georgia Sherman projects in Toronto. Abroad he has shown at Galeria Anomalia in Mexico City and is slated for an upcoming show at the Drey Gallery in Berlin.

Opening reception, Saturday Dec 4th, 1pm - 8pm

( Refreshments generously provided by our friends at Great Lakes Brewery ) 

The Drey Toronto, 1229A Woodbine Ave, M4C 4E1, East York 

The Drey Berlin, Pistorusstrasse 100, 103086. Berlin DE 

Image: 'Death' 2021, Digital Print by Matt Crookshank 

DEN OF DAGGERS

While our Toronto storefront gallery gets finalized, The Drey is hosting its second huiskammer exhibition featuring the constructively heavy works of artists Romas Astrauskas, Michael Stecky and Simon Petepiece. 

"Found objects, chance creations, ready-mades ( mass-produced items promoted into art objects ) abolish the separation between art and life. The commonplace is miraculous if rightly seen"  Charles Simic 

Opening reception, Saturday July 24th, 2pm - 8pm

The Drey, 1229 (1/2) Woodbine Ave, M4C 4E1, East York 

Image: Orange Transient Spike by Michael Stecky 

SMEARBALLS: CRYPTODUMPS 

Director and animator, Nick DenBoer is exhibiting a montage of his Cryptodumps at The Drey Berlin's street front video booth. 

DenBoer is an internationally recognized artist in the medium of animation with a recent Juno nomination for his work as well as holding tenure as a content creator for Conan O'Brien.

Opening reception, Saturday July 10th, 12pm - 5pm

The Drey Berlin: Pistoriusstraße 100, 13086 Berlin. 

Candy Jail 

While our storefront gallery gets finalized, The Drey is launching Toronto's only international Huiskammer gallery this summer! Please join us for our inaugural exhibition 'Candy Jail' at our Toronto satellite project space with featured artists:

Hiyme Brummett, Ed DeRyke, Laurie Skantzos and John Kissick.

Opening reception, Saturday June 19th, 2pm - 8pm

The Drey: 1229 ( 1/2 ) Woodbine Ave. 

Twenty one Improvised Extinctions: 

Tasman Richardson @ The Drey Berlin

1200 digital paintings, drawn by the artist, interpreted by gauGAN, the AI app. Each iteration has been an attempt to steer a narrative, not knowing how each step would be interpreted by the AI. I draw, it responds, then I respond with small revisions, always building on the previous result. Each landscape was evolved slowly and then suddenly scrubbed by a cataclysm, wiping the slate to begin a new world. Meanwhile, day and night, meeting and working at my screen, my window started to feel like another screen, under glass. Window browsing virtual and real are more alike now. We cast ourselves into the screens and the screens respond, interpret our wants, and narrow our field of view until our landscape is reduced to a soliloquy to ourselves.

1 min 20 sec loop, 1080x1080p, 30 fps, stereo.

Apophenia Zephyr

Our sister gallery-The Drey Berlin, kicks off its Deutschland expansion with an exploration of the aesthetic whiffs that emanate from mistakenly meaningful connections between unrelated things.

Vernissage: Thursday October 29th, 5pm to 10pm. 

This salon style grouping will feature artworks by: Melissa Steckbauer; Matt Crookshank; Romas Astrauskas; John Kissick; Michael N Green; Ron Loranger; Christopher Lori; Drew Simpson and Casey McGlynn. 

The Drey's sister gallery is located at the Weissensee Studio, Pistoriusstraße 100, 13086 Berlin. 

Promo image by Casey McGlynn, 'Motorcycle Momma'  2018, acrylic, India ink, oil pastel 

IMMACULATE MISCONCEPTION

It's our first birthday and to celebrate we're having an official baby shower to welcome our newest foreign bundle of joy, The Drey Berlin @ Weißenssee Studio.

“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”

Vernissage: Saturday Sept 26th, 12 to 6

New works being exhibited by Michael Nathaniel Green and James (Hiyme) Brummett. 

Also in attendance :

Ulysses Castellanos, Kiniko Ivic, Matt Crookshank, Jubal Brown, Ron Loranger, Christopher Lori, Ed de Ryk, SP38, Casey McGlynne, John Kissick and Romas Astrauskas 

Promotional image: Matt Crookshank  'Illuminated Caveman' (detail) 

UNLIMITED HANGOUT

In an attempt to atone for the contemporary trend of curatorial malpractice, The Drey will distance itself from the current climate of mass manufactured likabilty and divisional descentism through the creation of a fictitious art collective we’re calling “Unlimited Hangout’

A Limited Hangout is "spy jargon for a favourite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting—sometimes even volunteering—some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further."

Vernissage: Saturday July 18th, 12 to 6

Exhibition runs into the dystopian year 2021

Exhibiting artists:

Ulysses Castellanos, Kiniko Ivic, Matt Crookshank, Jubal Brown, Ron Loranger, Christopher Lori, Ed de Ryk, SP38, Casey McGlynne, John Kissick, Romas Astrauskas and James (Hiyme) Brummett.

Promotional image: Ulysses Castellanos, detail of "Royal Family' Courtesy of Georgia Scherman Projects.

TERRITORIAL PISSINGS

Reception : Saturday, July 4th, 3 - 9pm

Exhibition Dates:  June 24th- July 16th, 2020

Location: The Drey, 515 Main St, Unit M2, Glen Williams 

Territorial Pissings features the private collection of Gallery Overlord, Drew Simpson. Artists include: Ron Loranger, Pascal Paquette, Romas Astraukas, Istvan Kantor, Mat Brown,  Joe Becker, Peter Wilde, Derik Mainella, Matt Bennett, John Kissick,  Robert Farmer, Jubal Brown and Tony Toccalino. 

DEN OF THE DAMNED

Deception Reception : Saturday, May 2nd, 3 - 9pm

Exhibition Dates: April 1st - June 1st, 2020

Location: The Drey, 515 Main St, Unit M2, Glen Williams 

The Drey has the privilege of hosting Monty Cantsin as our 3rd exhibiting solo artist during the Covid 19-84 Plandemic.

Istvan Kantor (a.k.a. Monty Cantsin) is active in the fields of robotics, sound, video, performance and new media. His work has been shown at many prestigious international art events, including Documenta and Ars Electronica.

Infamous for his "blood-x donations" to the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the National Gallery (Ottawa), AGO (Toronto), and the Ludwig Museum (Koln), just to mention a few, Kantor/Cantsin's criminal records are even longer than his list of awards. The media and critics have described his work as rebellious, anti-authoritarian, and intellectually assaulting, as well as technically innovative and highly experimental.

He has received the Telefilm Award for Best Canadian Video (Images festival, Toronto), the Transmediale 01 award in Berlin Germany, for his new video Broadcast, and the Canadian Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts.

Internationally known as the founder of Neoism, Istvan has lived in Budapest, Paris, Montreal, Portland, New York and since 1991, Toronto Canada. 

CLUSTER FCUK

Opening Reception: Saturday, March 7th, 12 - 6pm

Exhibition Dates: February 1st - April 1st, 2020

Location: The Drey, 515 Main St, Unit M2, Glen Williams 

STAY POSITIVE 

'Potluck Dynamo' studio studies byJohn Kissick.