Martin Golland: what is said and what is meant

March 23 to April 16, 2006

The lush paintings of Guelph artist Martin Golland accentuate the activity of projection within the perception of the real.  His work exists in the rift between consciousness and vision where the painted surface of the canvases allows for imagined, or perceived, visual experiences.  Golland's exterior and interior landscapes are spaces that both invite and negate the spectator's gaze.  The artist has compiled a source inventory of scrap modernist tropes, magazine fragments, diagrams, film stills, and digital photography that has become the impetus for improvised fictions constructed in oil on canvas.  From this archive of popular material, Golland attempts to create an immersive space in paint that involves acts of sensation, cognition, imaginative association, disorientation and sensory confusion. Golland's paintings approach the psychological disparity between mimetic factuality and artifice, where representation becomes ambivalent, complex and ambiguous. 

Golland earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with distinction from Concordia University (Montreal) and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Guelph.  Selected recent solo and group exhibitions of his work include Splendour at the Upstairs Gallery (Victoria, BC), HAVEN at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (BC), and Double Barrel Blast at Zavitz Gallery (Guelph).  In 2006, Golland participated in the group exhibition Domestic Bliss at Open Space (Victoria, BC).  Martin Golland is represented by the Leo Kamen Gallery (Toronto).  He lives and works in Guelph, Ontario. 

The Opening Reception for Martin Golland: what is said and what is meant was on Thursday, March 23 at 7:00 p.m. with the artist in attendance.

Images:    Top: House for Karen, 2006
                  (oil on canvas)
                 Bottom: Lobby at La Gran Bahia, 2006
                  (oil on canvas)

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