LITHIFY
GROUP SHOW

by Guest Artists

On View: Nov 29 - Dec 2
Opening: Thurs, Nov 30, 5 - 9 pm

Lithify presents the work of eight emerging Tkaronto-based artists working between figuration, landscape, and abstraction, who understand the picture plane as equally distancing and vulnerable.

To lithify is the process by which a sediment transforms into stone. Painting as lithification is to solidify feelings and concepts, otherwise undefinable, through paint. Fixed and unchanging experiences become transitional and fluid when experienced outside of oneself, and the painting becomes a solidified cohesion, which drifts into ephemerality when processed cognitively. Sentiments of loss, identity, memory, and deja vu dance in and out of focus as they fight against the impenetrable nature of the stone-faced canvas/ground. Static in themselves,they shine through in fleeting moments of realization and recollection.

Participating Guest Artists:

Olivia Aguiar
Benjamin J. Cromien
Emerald Repard –Denniston
Lily Kapler
Jake Santos
Ali Sheikh
Hayeon Song
Connor Rothe

Artist Bio:
Olivia Aguiar is an emerging artist born, raised and working in Tkaronto. Olivia's practice is interdisciplinary with a focus on digital collage, experimental animation, oil and acrylic painting. Across her body of work, Olivia explores nostalgia, personhood and spirituality. Reconstructing daily experiences, memories and family archives into paintings, Olivia's pictorial grounds interlace figuration and abstraction to deal with melancholia and sense of self in the obscurity of contemporary being. Olivia is a recent graduate of OCAD University with a BFA in Drawing and Painting, and a minor in Gender and Sexuality (2023).

Benjamin J. Cromien is an artist born in Paris, ON, currently living and working in Toronto. Benjamin Cromien’s practice explores the traditional subject matter through the lens of the abstract. Cromien is currently studying at OCAD University for a BFA in Drawing & Painting.  

Emerald Repard-Denniston is visual artist based in Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam/Vancouver, and Tkaronto/Toronto. She is a multidisciplinary artist drawn to painting, digital media, and activist work. Emerald’s current art practice revolves around contemporary figurative oil painting. Through her practice she plays around with humor, cynicism, and detachment. Emerald explores the influences of Western politics and culture, having conversations around the nuances of cultural criticism. Her research focuses on contextualizing issues within the contemporary and social world, including: issues of representation, diasporic story telling, and feminist/queer theories.

Lily Kapler is an oil painter from Toronto whose subject matter surrounds themes of intimacy, time, tendencies, and impulses. Her work is an inventory of spontaneous perceptions, inspired by her experience with Trataka meditation, she explores her personal identity using visual memory, the underlying question being; how do the things we notice and pay attention to inform how we see the world?

Jake Santos is an emerging artist and writer from Newmarket, ON, currently based in Toronto, studying at OCADU for both Drawing & Painting, and Creative Writing. Jake’s work often focuses on the personal experience through a conceptual lense, often blending portraiture, and/or figurative subjects with abstraction. Using negative space often as an aesthetic tool to explore texture and space to create an ambient experience.

Ali Sheikh is a multidisciplinary artist from Mississauga, Ontario, currently working in Toronto. Through painting, illustration, and installation, his current body of work explores the relationship between dread and love, and considers the sublime of the human experience through a momentary, mundane lens.

Hayeon Song is an artist born in South Korea and based in Toronto. She primarily uses pencils, erasers, and linseed oil to explore the interplay of opposing forces - her focus lies in subtle value shifts, parallel lines, and the battle between positive and negative space. Through automated mark-making, she creates a delicate balance between light and shadow, order and chaos. Hayeon actively scavenges wood or metal as new mediums to express themes of duality on a three-dimensional plane.

Connor Rothe is a visual artist from Waterloo, Ontario currently studying Drawing and Painting at OCADU. He explores landscape painting through his experience with derealization. Derealization is a dissociative disorder that has mentally detached him from reality. Using airbrushed acrylic, his paintings are both photographic and blurry. In this, he attempts to straddle the line between real and unreal.