Bio
Born in 2004, Whitby-based visual artist Callum Donovan-Grujicich began creating artwork seriously in 2014, combining mixed-media elements and clay to create figurative sculptures. Since 2021, however, he has worked primarily in two-dimensional media, with a focus on oil painting. Callum's practice is currently directed toward themes of ideology, systems of thought, and social cohesion; these ideas are represented in his work through use of symbolism and reference to visual culture. After completing his high school education in 2022, Callum began his BFA in OCAD University's Drawing and Painting program. He has participated in various exhibitions at Canadian galleries, including the Whitby Station Gallery, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa, and Cape Breton University Art Gallery in Cape Breton.
Artist Statement
This oil painting is intended as a visual representation of the process and perpetuation of individual belief systems. The mannequin figure, symbolizing humans as subject to their personal systems of thought (both through its lack of personalized features and its intended use as an object to be physically manipulated), is gripped by the larger figure. This larger figure, representing the constructed systems of belief of humans (as may be suggested by the inclusion of several fragmented faces on its rectangular surface), firmly grips the mannequin, representing the totalizing and rigid nature with which such structures often enact their influence in our actions and our acceptance of unfamiliar information. The mannequin, however, also holds a rope secured around the wrist of the larger figure. This detail reflects the way in which we often appear to act as free agents in the construction of our personal belief systems, but that in fact, these systems are not freely altered or independently built, but are rather self-perpetuating to a great extent due to the fault of human cognitive bias. This idea is further expanded in the inclusion of two funnels placed on the large figure (an allusion to one of my previous works in which funnels represent a filtering or “funneling” of information which characterizes confirmation bias). From these funnels extend objects alluding to both nonsense and violence.
