Welcome to IN THE SPOTLIGHT, an online exhibition.
At 13th Street Gallery we are always keeping an eye out for new and exciting artists. Our annual group shows are a great opportunity to introduce new talent and emerging artists to our visitors and clients. It allows for these artists to showcase their works with some of Canada’s renowned artists.
This year we have invited a couple of guests artists. IN THE SPOTLIGHT is our efforts to introduce their work and creative vision.
ANGELINA BONTEMPO
“Since 2013 I have explored abstract painting, with its freedom and expression. My journey began as a self-taught artist and I create from and inner voice or emotion which has no boundaries or rules, rather a guided intuition. My work falls within the realm of the Automatism art.”
In Volo, 2020 acrylic on canvas 24″ x 48″ $1,600.00
*SOLD* Gnossienne #1, 2020 acrylic on canvas 24″ x 24″ $750.00
Rapsody, 2020 acrylic on canvas 20″ x 20″ $600.00
Interlude, 2020 acrylic on canvas 48″ x 30″ $2,000.00 
GEOFF FARNSWORTH
“My visual art style first began to take shape after training in the realism classes from the live human model at the Art Students League in New York City, where I trained from 1997 to 2002. I then began to work in the abstract painting studios, mostly under Bill Scharf, who had been the protege, studio assistant, and friend of Mark Rothko. This direct line of New York Abstract Expressionism began to meld into my figurative work with a spirit for process, experimentation, and colour exploration.
Being originally from the interior of B.C. and North Vancouver, Canada; this morphed spirit between disrupted realism and abstraction became embedded into a painterly west coast aesthetic of painting.
My paintings explore a relationship between figurative and abstraction in order to meld unconscious probing and stylistic innovation with a meditative figural base. It is important to me that the paintings work well as collections of shape, colour, texture, and energy, while also building a compelling image. Working with people and objects from my personal world, I focus on maintaining a balance between plan and accident, known and unknown, restraint and exuberance. My figures look out as much into mindscape as landscape.”
St. Paul. St. Kitts, 2014 oil on panel 40″ x 40″ $3,900.00
MIKE HANSEN
Mike Hansen is a senior Canadian artist who uses sound and noise to develop artworks in various mediums. He is well known as an established colourist painter, sound artist and experimental musician. His body of work explores the visualization of sound and noise. Hansen has exhibited globally in public museums, commercial galleries, and artist-run centres.
“My current research and practice evolves around notions of noise as a tool to create a social situation. Noise is defined as what it is not, generating a negative stereotype. I see noise as an invitation not a disturbance. The installations I create allow the beholder to play a pivotal role in the works’ authorship.
The spectator may not be aware of their role in my works constructing a mystery by exploiting the sounds and movements of themselves. Many of my installations are an invitation to the gallery goer to touch and /or to speak causing us to break the codes of established gallery ethics.
I believe my works expand the insight of the participant, by the creation of community through shared experience. The non-passive role of the spectator allows one to achieve an understanding of contemporary art practices by playing a strong position in the works actually function.
The works I create put the spectator in various situations from walking the red carpet to becoming a giant in the woods. The participant plays actor, improviser and creator. From triggering an experience to, possibly unknowingly, building the work itself.”
Organum (Remix), 2018 acrylic on canvas 20″ x 20″ $1,800.00
