Untitled Isabelle Beaupré Main Gallery Recent Paintings Douglas Witmer Second Gallery Exhibition Opens: Saturday, December 5, 2020, 12:00 - 5:00 PM On View Through: January 9, 2021 Gray Contemporary | 3508 Lake Street, Houston, Texas 77098 Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 12:00 - 5:00 PM Page 1 of 14 Untitled (no.22), acrylic, burlap, sand, gel medium, plaster and gravel on wood, 30.90 x 10.31 in., 2019 Untitled Isabelle Beaupré Main Gallery Exhibition Statement The non-figurative artworks of Beaupré can be perceived as an in-between painting and sculpture. She meticulously uses different materials such as wood, plaster, sand and jute. She creates through repetitions of shapes and/or textures some monochrome compositions often delimited by segmentation, fragmentation or stratification. Her artistic production is empowered by the aesthetic potential of its constituents themselves. The artist is motivated by the possibility to create, manipulate and modify a shape. Her practice questions the possible infinite number of repeats of these shapes, each replica being necessarily submitted to a certain level of changes. Her refined and solemn work highlights the importance of details as her ethos is close to minimalism and Arte povera. Her creative process is based on concentration and contemplation, it adopts an instinctive approach reaching beyond formalism, it possesses its own sensitive aspect. Artist Isabelle Beaupré, born in 1978 in Montreal, studied visual and media arts at Université du Québec à Montréal and has been represented by different galleries since where she did numerous solo and group exhibitions. Her art was seen in many major arts events as Art Souterrain and Nuit Blanche and she was invited to show in many art fairs as Papier and at The Contemporary Art Fair of Saint-Lambert amongst others through Canada. Her works can be found in corporate collections across Canada as Senvest Collection, Padorac as well as in many private collections. Isabelle Beaupré shows for the second time in Houston, Texas; she lives and works in Montreal, Canada. Page 2 of 14 Untitled, black gesso and acrylic on canvas, 12 x 9 in., 2018 Recent Paintings Douglas Witmer Second Gallery Exhibition Statement Over the course of the past two decades, Douglas Witmer has steadily pursued a personal inquiry into the materiality of the painted object, refining his processes to a set of consciously chosen, direct and economical actions. In his recent work, Witmer applies the paint in watercolor-thin layers. From start to finish on a painting, his interactions with the surface are completely additive. Sometimes a wash is cascaded down the entire face of the painting. Other times Witmer establishes structure with flat housepainters’ brushes. And still other times he creates marks in gestural strokes or via incidental means, such as touching one wet painting against another. The highly fluid nature of this painting process sets up challenging dynamics of control and release. And Witmer coaxes a wide range of emotional results from his basic approaches. Even as his paintings are quite particular, Witmer desires to offer his viewer an open invitation into their own very personal experience of seeing and feeling. Artist Douglas Witmer (b. 1971) is an American artist based in Philadelphia. He is internationally known within the field of reductive geometric abstraction. His work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions. In 2011 an exhibition spanning ten years of the artist’s work was mounted at the Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College in Winter Park, FL. Other venues include: MoMA PS1, The Curator Gallery, and The Painting Center (all NYC), The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Tiger Strikes Asteroid (Philadelphia), Hemphill Fine Arts (Washington, DC), ICON Contemporary Art (Brunswick, ME), The Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, Gray Contemporary (Houston), Gebert Contemporary (Santa Fe), The University of Maryland, The University of Dayton, Galerie Biesenbach (Germany), Galerie Page 3 of 14 Mathias Mayr (Austria), ParisCONCRET (France), Sydney Non-Objective (Australia), and Sol del Rio Arte Contemporánea (Guatemala City). His work is held in the collections of The Woodmere Art Museum, The Sheldon Museum of Art at the University of Nebraska, The Columbus Museum, Columbus, Georgia and The Fellowship of The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, as well as numerous corporate and private collections internationally. His work has been documented in publications by The Woodmere Museum of Art, The Free Library of Philadelphia, The Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State University, and The University of Manitoba press, and his exhibitions have been reviewed in The Washington Post, Two Coats of Paint, and Art New England, and other arts periodicals and websites. Witmer has also curated numerous exhibitions in the United States mostly centered on themes and issues within the discipline of abstract painting. He holds a B.A. from Goshen College and an M.F.A. from The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Gray Contemporary For more information, call 713.862.4425, email [email protected], or visit www.graycontemporary.com. Page 4 of 14 ISABELLE BEAUPRE EDUCATION 2001 Visual and media arts at Université du Québec à Montréal 2000 Visual Art, Cégep Marie-Victorin, Montréal SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2016 Les intérieurs, Dominique Bouffard Gallery, Montréal, QC 2015 Mines: From the ground to the depths, Dominique Bouffard Gallery, Montréal, QC 2013 Shantytown and Garbage Dumps, Outremont Art Gallery, Montréal, QC 2012 Shantytown, Dominique Bouffard Gallery, Montréal, QC Shantytown, local 514, Belgo, Montréal, QC 2009 Corps à os, SAS Gallery, Montréal, QC SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2019 Gray Contemporary Group exhibition, Gray Contemporary Gallery, Houston, TX 2018 Contemporary Art fair of Saint-Lambert, QC 2017 Summer in the city, Laroche/Joncas Gallery, Montréal, QC 2016 10th anniversary, Dominique Bouffard Gallery, QC 2015 Art and Narration, Dominique Bouffard Gallery, Montréal, QC Revue, Dominique Bouffard Gallery, Montréal, QC 2013 President choice: Robert Poulin Outsideur Collecto, Outremont Art Gallery, Mtl Extreme Painting / Painting Object, Dominique Bouffard Gallery, Montréal, QC 2012 ''Édouard's Friends'', Bain Mathieu, Montréal, QC 2011 Prendre l`air ,Collectif, Dominique Bouffard Gallery 2009 ART FAIR, Papier10, SAS Gallery, édifice Blackwatch, Montréal, QC Underground ArtFair,Collective as part of Nuit Blanche, Montréal, QC Page 5 of 14 2008 Small is beautiful, SAS Gallery, Belgo, Montréal 2007 Auction exhibition ''Parle- moi d`amour'' Les impatients Gallery, Montréal, QC 2006 Découvertes 2006, SAS Gallery, Belgo, Montréal Les Inconnus de la ville, Rosemont/Petite-Patrie House of Culture, Montréal, QC 2005 Interface II, Espace 306, Belgo, Montréal, QC Interface, Espace 306, Belgo, Montréal, QC 2003 Château St-Ambroise Gallery, Montréal, QC COLLECTIONS SENVEST COLLECTION PADORAC LA PEAU DE L`OURS EROS BIBLIOGRAPHY Monstra, édition spéciale de Décover. Montréal, octobre 2013. POHL, John. << Painting Project heads to extremes in second phase>>, The Gazette Montréal, 22 juin 2013, p. E5. BABIN, Normand. ``Peinture extrême 2013, premier parcours``. Montréalistement (blogue) Montréal, 28 juin 2013. BABIN, Normand. <<Bidon pas bidon du tout>>, Montréalistement (blogue) Montréal 19 novembre 2012. MALAVOY-RACINE, Tristan. <<Isa B>>, Voir, Montréal, 26 mars 2009. Arts Hole, <<Lemurs, wolves and Tamarins>>, Mirror, Mtl, 28 septembre-4 octobre 2006, p.55. INTERVIEWS L`HEUREUX, Chantale. Entrevue, In Situ, Radio CIBL 101.5 fm, 25 novembre 2012. ARCHAMBAULT, Pierre. Entrevue, Espace Visuel, Radio Centre-Ville 102.3 fm, 22 novembre 2012 BOUCHER, Sylvain. Entrevue vidéo, Le Vadrouilleur Urbain, 7 novembre 2012 Page 6 of 14 DOUGLAS WITMER EDUCATION 2001 M.F.A., The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia 1993 B.A., Goshen College, Indiana SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2020 Gray Contemporary, Houston, TX 2017 Dubh Glas, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Philadelphia, PA 2016 Verse and Chorus, Gray Contemporary, Houston Naranja, boeckercontemporary, Heidelberg, Germany 2015 fourpart, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Philadelphia Recent Paintings, Alumni Gallery, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia 2013 All Kinds of Ways to Your Garden, Blank Space Art, New York, NY School Papers, NIAD Art Center, Richmond, CA 2011 I Found A Reason, Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College, Winter Park, FL (catalogue) Fruitville / The School Papers, AxD Gallery, Philadelphia 2010 Ring the Bells Anew, Blank Space Art, New York Fruitville, Some Walls, Oakland, CA 2009 Field + Stream, Project Room, The Painting Center, New York Joseph’s Coat, The Philadelphia Cathedral Joseph’s Coat, Howard Conn Fine Arts Center, Plymouth Congregational Church, Minneapolis, MN 2008 Today is the Day, M55 Art, Long Island City, NY 2006 The Black Keys, and Other Paintings, Gallery Siano, Philadelphia Contemplation, Red Door Gallery, Richmond, VA 2002 New Paintings, Peng Gallery, Philadelphia Douglas Witmer, Goshen College, Goshen, IN 1997 Recent Paintings, University City Arts League, Philadelphia. Recent Paintings, University of Montana―Western, Dillon Page 7 of 14 SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2020 Galerie Mathias Mayr, Innsbruck, Austria Twenty One, Gray Contemporary, Houston Carte Blanche, Galerie Biesenbach, Cologne, Germany MNMLSM II, Galerie Biesenbach, Cologne 2019 Big Circle, curated by divisible, M17 Contemporary Art, Kiev, Ukraine New Modern--The Road Paintings, curated by Billy Gruner,