AMY SCHISSEL

AMY SCHISSEL

PATRICK MIKHAIL GALLERY is pleased to present AMY SCHISSEL: SYSTEMS FEVER, a new catalogue 2011 RBC Canadian Painting Competition Finalist AMY SCHISSEL.


AMY SCHISSEL: SYSTEMS FEVER
FOREWORD BY SANDRA DYCK
ESSAY BY PETRA HALKES
ISBN: 978-0-9880344-0-2
$40

ORDER ONLINE NOW

PATRICK MIKHAIL GALLERY is pleased to launch AMY SCHISSEL: SYSTEMS FEVER the first catalogue in our new initiative entitled PATRICK MIKHAIL PUBLISHING. The catalogue features a foreword by curator Sandra Dyck and an essay by artist, curator, and scholar Petra Halkes. The catalogue is launched in conjunction with the exhibition entitled SYSTEMS FEVER, the artist's first solo exhibition with the gallery.

WE ARE PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE AMY SCHISSEL IS A FINALIST IN THE 2011 ROYAL BANK OF CANADA CANADIAN PAINTING COMPETITION.

Amy Schissel completed her BFA in 2002 from the University of Ottawa and her MFA from the University of Ottawa in 2009. She was Canada’s 2009 recipient of the Brucebo Fine Arts Award – a fully funded three month residency in Visby, Sweden. Schissel has shown both nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at the University of Brussels Gallery, Belgium, the Karsh Masson Gallery in Ottawa, and at Centre d’art Imagier in Gatineau, Quebec.

Schissel’s works are included in private and corporate collections, including the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, and the Gotland Museum of Fine Arts, Sweden. Schissel is the recipient of various Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and City of Ottawa grants and awards. Upcoming events include exhibition “4 Ottawa Painters” at Carleton University Art Gallery in November 2010, and a winter residency at Vermont Studio Center in 2011. Schissel lives and maintains her practice in Gatineau, Quebec.

The constant presence of digital technology in a data-driven and media-saturated culture supplies the subconscious with an onslaught of virtual and synthetic imagery, to which the human imagination has adapted. Examining the social ramifications of this altered state of the imagination became the seed for Schissel's most recent body of work. Presented to the viewer is a surface on which the language of painting is altered by the influence of digital technology, acting as a lens through which to translate a current understanding of space. Embodying modes of digital representation such as pixels, clusters, loops etc., in paint, opens up an arena of vague, yet familiar spatial emulations of electronic environments (networked computing environments, internet experiences, virtual reality, etc). Through the hybridization of digital processes and the material specificity of paint, Schissel aims to reappraise the language of abstract painting and re-negotiate its forms of signification. In turn this gives rise to a contemporary imagery that flips between abstraction and representation.

Schissel’s paintings evolve through obsessive, repetitive mark making where paint and other media are built up and then worked back into to almost mysteriously 'find' the resulting images. Materials are layered to construct a working surface; a collage of plaster, recycled drawings, various weights of paper, charcoal, graphite, inks, acrylic paints, oil stick, crayon, markers, and colored paper shreds. The surface is then worked back into by cutting or peeling away at the various layers, which are replaced on the surface once spatial shifts begin to emerge.

This regenerative process allows Schissel to invent, find, and react to emerging forms and sequences that command her investigation and inform the evolution of linear networking. Interchanging the positioning of the works’ panels throughout production causes line, form, and sequential patterning to fragment, furthering their permeation. From this, a visual syntax is constructed which she can negotiate and work into phrases, stressing the transformative nature of the process. Schissel continues to move and push through this process, until eventually a multidimensional matrix of associations is constructed, suggesting a forming image rather than an image formed. The works, in the end, mark the history of their making; maps of unfolding imaginary dimensions whose sequential patterns stretch out into a vast, quasi scientific world.


CURRICULUM VITAE

EDUCATION
2009 Master of Fine Arts, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario
2002 Bachelor of Fine Arts, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2012 (Upcoming), Patrick Mikhail Gallery, Ottawa, Ontario
2010 Matter, Centre d’exposition imager, Gatineau, Quebec
2009 Prolix X, Karsh-Masson Gallery, Ottawa, Ontario
2006 Skinned, Vreij University of Brussels Gallery, Brussels, Belgium

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2012 Papier 12 Contemporary Art Fair, Montreal
2012 PMG Editions Project, Patrick Mikhail Gallery, Ottawa
2011 RBC Canadian Painting Competition Finalists Exhibition, Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Hamilton Art Gallery, Hamilton, Ontario, The Power Plant, Toronto, Ontario
2011 Art Fair Confidential, Contemporary Art Galleries Association, (as part of Art Toronto Week), with Patrick Mikhail Gallery, The Brickworks, Toronto, Ontario
2011 State of the Art, Patrick Mikhail Gallery, Ottawa, Ontario
2011 Le party, (fundraiser) Ottawa Art Gallery, Ottawa, Ontario
2011 Faculty Art Show, Algonquin College, Ottawa, Ontario
2011 Luck, (fundraiser) Council for the Arts in Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario
2010 Toronto International Art Fair, Patrick Mikhail Gallery, Toronto
2010 4 Ottawa Painters, Carleton University Art Gallery, curator Sandra Dyck, Ottawa Ontario
2010 The Triumph of the Therapeutic, Patrick Mikhail Gallery, Ottawa, Ontario
2010 Peinture Extrême, Extreme Painting, Gallery Orange, curator Nadia Niro, Montreal, Quebec
2010 Yuristy-Schissel (with Russel Yuristy), Cube Gallery, Ottawa, Ontario
2009 Boom!, Living Arts Centre Gallery, Toronto, Ontario
2009 Luck, Council for the Arts in Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario
2009 Nocturne, Cube Gallery, Ottawa, Ontario
2009 On/Off, Gallery 115, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario
2008 Peinture Fraiche – Fresh Paint, Art Mur Gallery, Montreal, Quebec
2008 Black and White, Cube Gallery, Ottawa, Ontario
2008 Luck, Council for the Arts in Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario
2008 Sweetheart Lunch (fundraiser), National Art Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario
2005 Tracking and Spinning, Zibibbo, Ottawa, Ontario

AWARDS AND GRANTS
2011 RBC Canadian Painting Competition Finalist
2011 Vermont Studio Center, Artist Grant for Winter Residency Program
2010 City of Ottawa Emerging Artist grant
2010 Ontario Arts Council Exhibition Grant
2010 Project Grant: Creation/Research Grant, Canada Council for the Arts
2010 Emerging Artist Grant, Ontario Council for the Arts
2009 Emerging Artist Production Grant ‘B’, City of Ottawa
2007 - 2009 Full Admissions Scholarship, University of Ottawa Graduate Studies
2002 Suzanne Rivard-Le Moine Award, 1st prize, University of Ottawa Graduate Show
2001 Gunter Nolte Drawing Award, 1st prize, University of Ottawa
2001 Millenium Scholarship, University of Ottawa Undergraduate Studies
2001 Admissions Scholarship, University of Ottawa Undergraduate Studies

RESIDENCY
2011 Vermont Studio Center (grant for 4 week residency), Johnson, VT, USA
2009 Brucebo Fine Arts Award (3 month residency), Brucebo Fine Arts Foundation, Visby, Sweden

COLLECTIONS
Royal Bank of Canada
Canada Council Art Bank
Gotland Museum of Fine Arts, Contemporary Canadian Collection, Gotland Sweden
Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Ottawa, Canada
Université Libre du Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium
New Zealand Consulate
Numerous Private Collections

PUBLICATIONS
2011 RBC Canadian Painting Competition: On Your Marks! Across Canada Summer 2011, Tess Edmonson, Canadian Art Magazine, Fall Edition 2011.
http://www.canadianart.ca/online/slideshows/2011/08/04/rbc_competition/
2011 RBC Canadian Painting Competition, Catalogue, Laurel Macmillan, Royal Bank of Canada, 2011, ISBN 978-0-9810676-1-2
Gatineau Artist Amy Schissel is one of 15 finalists from Across Canada in the 2011 RBC Canadian Painting Competition, Ottawa Citizen, July 18, 2011, image by Julie Oliver
Success No Small Feat for Finalists, John Pohl, Gazette Visual Arts Critic, September 23, 2011
Ottawa’s Art Seen, episode 8, Interview with host Lilly Colton, Rogers T.V, Nov 8, 2011
Digitally Analog, Interview with Amy Schissel, Al Morrisson, Ottawa Tonight, April 10th, 2010
Opposites Abstract, Adam Volk, Ottawa (X) Press, April 8, 2010
Amy Schissel: 20 Questions, Bruce Deachman, The Ottawa Citizen, March 21, 2010
Making a Splash: New Cube Gallery reflects Ottawa’s maturing visual arts scene, Patrick Langston, The Ottawa Citizen, January 23, 2010
Amy Schissel – 77 Days of Summer: An Emerging Artist’s Account of Recent Painting Residency in Sweden, Stephan Lauzon ed., CAO Circular, Winter 2009, Vol. 17.4
Interview, with Mitchel Caplan, CHUO FM Radio, Ottawa, Ontario, September 15, 2009
Art in Motion, Peter Simpson, The Ottawa Citizen, August 31, 2009
Premier cuvee, Katie Le Van, Voir, August 27, 2009
Science Meets Art With View to the Heavens, Tom Spears, The Ottawa Citizen, June 3, 2009
Prolix X: Paintings by Amy Schissel, Karsh-Masson, City of Ottawa Galleries, July 2009, mini exhibition catalogue
Feu d’artifice cosmique a la galerie Cube, Claude Bouchard, Le Journal le Droit, May 30, 2009
Peinture Fraiche – Fresh Paint, Francois St.-Jacques, July - August 2008, Vol. 3, no. 7, exhibition catalogue
Success for Schissel, The Fulcrum, October 2002

LECTURES AND WORKSHOPS
Algonquin College, Introduction to Fine Arts Certificate Program, Professor: Life Drawing, Business of Art, Sept 2011-present, Ottawa, Ontario
“Four Ottawa Painters” (Invited Artist Talk), Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa, Ontario, January 23, 2011
“Amy Schissel-Latest Series” (Invited Artist Lecture), University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, October 19, 2011
Guest Instructor, Fourth Year Studio, University of Ottawa, Ottawa Ontario, December 10, 2010
“Painting and Technology” (Invited Artist Lecture), Ringling College of Art and Design, Sarasota, Florida, April 12, 2010
“The Matter, Recent Paintings” (Invited Artist Lecture), Hope College, DePree Arts Center, Holland, Michigan, U.S.A., March 16, 2009
“Skinned” (Artist talk and workshop), November 11, 2005

MEMBERSHIP AND VOLUNTEER WORK
December 2009 – Present CARFAC
January 2009 – Present College Arts Association
January 2008 – Present Council for the Arts in Ottawa
January – February 2008 SAW Gallery


© Copyright 2011 PATRICK MIKHAIL GALLERY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. The contents of this Website may not be used or duplicated without the authorization of PATRICK MIKHAIL GALLERY and/or its represented artists.