Kristi Ropeleski (Montreal)

Blue Skies

November 5 – December 5
Opening reception: Friday November 5, 7pm
Artist talk: Sunday November 14, 3pm

Text by Edwin Janzen click here

Listen to the artist talk (audio)

Blue Skies is an idea that represents a familiar occurrence/image, a vast space and an idealized state. It addresses both the limit of a sense, in the way that I can’t see beyond a blue sky, and the awareness that it is not a flat surface. This ‘space’ cuts both ways through the things I know and the things I believe. I am interested in the vulnerability fostered by this ‘space’ and the complex naïveté its experience requires.

The paintings suggest a loose narrative supported by sentimental imagery, both broad and subjective. They are precious and seductive. The texture is that of overripe fruit and plastic flowers, the smell is of drugstore perfume. The colours depict objects as icons and vibrate in and of themselves. The illusions described on the surfaces of the paintings tell of contradictory spaces and circumstances. The imagery in the paintings describe anthropomorphic objects turned into characters, icons, sloppy feelings, romantic idealists and slogans. In layering these images and symbols of happiness, a certain fragility materialized; the mass of this abundance simultaneously questions its own plausibility and asserts a ravenous desire for more.

Kristi Ropeleski is a Montreal based artist. Her paintings have been exhibited internationally over the span of the past 10 years in diverse venues such as The Philoctetes Center for the Study of the Imagination in New York city and at the Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art. She has studied at Dawson College, Concordia University and holds a Master's degree in Visual Arts from York University in Toronto. She is a member of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Dawson College and The Visual Arts Center.

Documentation of the exhibition : Guy L'Heureux