Robert Wiens (born 1953 in Leamington, Ontario) is a Canadian visual artist.
Robert Wiens was born in Leamington, Ontario in 1953, and currently lives in Picton, Ontario. [1] He attended the New School of Art from 1973 to 1974, and had his first solo exhibition at Mercer Union in Toronto in 1980. [2] Wiens’ paintings and sculptures have been exhibited internationally. Recent exhibitions include Do Not Destroy: Trees, Art and Jewish Thought at The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco; [3] Micro/Macro at Gallery Stratford, Stratford, Ontario and Doris McCarthy Gallery, Toronto; [1] and Speak for the Trees, organized by Friesen Gallery in Seattle, Washington and Sun Valley, Idaho. Wiens has completed commissioned sculptures for the Open Corridor Festival in Windsor, Ontario and for the Forest Art Project in Haliburton, Ontario. His work is held in public collections, including the National Gallery of Canada, [4] Ottawa; Agnes Etherington Art Centre, [5] Kingston; Four Seasons Hotel, Tokyo; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, and Doris McCarthy Gallery, Toronto.
Wiens’ early work consisted of large-scale sculptures and installations, depicting fragments of heroic monuments. [6] He used sculpture and installation to explore social issues and ideas of language and representation. [7] He is perhaps best known for his large-scale watercolour close-ups of pine trees, which he began painting in 1996. The watercolours are detailed portraits of trees, including old-growth pines in Temagami, Ontario, and deciduous trees found in his local area. [8] Wiens photographs the trees and then painstakingly reproduces their texture, colour and scale. The renderings are extremely detailed and dense. [9] Wiens’ tree portraits also function as memorials to, or remnants of the destruction of Canadian forests. As John Armstong writes in C Magazine, "Wiens creates, in his pinpoint framing and cool description, a chilly distance between the living trees and what we see in the gallery: he gestures both romance and the deadpan optics of a ledger. Without any didactic tone, these paintings chronicle a simultaneously grim and poetic politic." [10]
Sorel Etrog, was a Romanian-born Israeli-Canadian artist, writer, and primarily, a sculptor. He specialized in modern art works and contemporary sculpture. Etrog's works explore his first-hand experience of the Second World War, the renewal of sculptural traditions in modern art, such as the use of bronze as a medium, and the opposition between the mechanical and the organic. One of Canada's leading artists in the 1960s, Etrog contributed to the country's growing interest in sculpture.
Kim Ondaatje is a Canadian painter, photographer, and documentary filmmaker.
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Helen Barbara Howard was a Canadian painter, wood-engraver, drafter, bookbinder and designer who produced work consistently throughout her life, from her graduation in 1951 from the Ontario College of Art until her unexpected death in 2002.
Robert Houle is a Saulteaux First Nations Canadian artist, curator, critic, and educator. Houle has had an active curatorial and artistic practice since the mid-1970s. He played an important role in bridging the gap between contemporary First Nations artists and the broader Canadian art scene through his writing and involvement in early important high-profile exhibitions such as Land, Spirit, Power: First Nations at the National Gallery of Canada. As an artist, Houle has shown both nationally and internationally. He is predominantly a painter working in the tradition of Abstraction, yet he has also embraced a pop sensibility by incorporating everyday images and text into his works. His work addresses lingering aspects of colonialism and their effects on First Nation peoples. Houle often appropriates historical photographs and texts, repurposing and combining them with Anishnaabe language and traditionally used materials such as porcupine quills within his works.
The Galeries Ontario / Ontario Galleries (GOG), formerly Ontario Association of Art Galleries / Association Ontarienne des Galeries d’Art (OAAG/AOGA), was established in 1968 to encourage development of public art galleries, art museums, community galleries and related visual arts organizations in Ontario, Canada. It was incorporated in Ontario in 1970, and registered as a charitable organization. It is a successor organization to the Southern Ontario Gallery Group founded in 1947, renamed the Art Institute of Ontario in 1952. In December 2020 Ontario Association of Art Galleries / Association Ontarienne des Galeries d’Art (OAAG/AOGA) rebranded to the name Galeries Ontario / Ontario Galleries (GOG) which included new brand identity, logo, and website to better serve art organizations in Ontario and Canada.
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Eugenia Berlin (1905–2003) was a Russian Empire-born Canadian sculptor, painter, designer and director.
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Mary Anne Barkhouse is a jeweller and sculptor residing in Haliburton, Ontario, Canada. She belongs to the Nimpkish band of the Kwakiutl First Nation.
Colette Whiten is a sculptor, and installation and performance artist who lives and works in Toronto, Canada. Whiten is a recipient of the Governor General's Medal.
Derek Sullivan is a contemporary visual artist from Toronto, Ontario. Sullivan’s multidisciplinary practice employs drawing, sculpture, book works, and installation to engage with the legacy of modernist art and design. He is currently an Assistant Professor in Sculpture/Installation at OCAD University.
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Spring Hurlbut is a Canadian artist, known for work that deals with the relationship between sculpture and architecture, and with themes of mortality. She lives and works in Toronto.
June Clark is a Toronto-based artist working in photography, installation sculpture and collage. Formerly known as June Clark-Greenberg, Born in Harlem, New York, Clark immigrated to Canada in 1968 and subsequently made Toronto her home. The questions of identity formation and their connection to our points of origin fuel her practice. Clark explores how history, memory, and identity—both individual and collective—have established the familial and artistic lineages that shape her work.
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Grover Timothy Whiten is an American-born Canadian artist who works in the areas of sculpture, drawing, performance art and multi-media installations, using a wide range of materials. He also has been an educator.
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Dault, Gary Michael. Robert Wiens, Carmen Lamanna Gallery. Canadian Art, vol.4, no.1(Spring 1987);
Fleming, Martha. Robert Wiens, Mercer Union. Vanguard, vol.9, no.8(October 1980);
Gopnik, Blake. Eclectic, electric and eccentric. The Globe and Mail, 24 July 1999;
Hansen, Michael, 2010-2011 Season: ArtSync. Toronto, Ontario: blurb.com, 2011;
Mays, John Bentley. The flowering of a creative discontent. The Globe and Mail, 17 March 1984;
Moore, Christopher. Wiens takes us behind the scenes in the theatre of war. The Queen's Journal, #32, vol.123;
Milroy, Sarah. Art grows in a forest. The Globe and Mail, 6 September 2002;
Randolph, Jeanne. Robert Wiens, YYZ. Vanguard, vol.12, no.3 (April 1983);
Reid, Stuart. Robert Wiens. Lola, no.6, Summer 2000;
Rhodes, Richard. Toronto, Robert Wiens. ArtForum, March 1987;