Post a Comment On: Unedit my heart

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Earlier this week, I was lucky to speak to Evan Penny about this work on view at the Art Gallery of Ontario exhibition "Re Figured."

Today, a related article was published in the Toronto Star. Here's an excerpt:

Double-takes abound at Evan Penny: Re Figured, just opened at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Penny, a Toronto-based artist, has been making wondrous, hyper-real sculptures of the human form for more than 30 years. Along the way, he’s gained international acclaim for his skill in recreating, with exacting detail, the textures, forms and gestures of the human body. Certainly, it can take a few looks to be sure there aren’t actual people lurking in his silicone-and-human-hair creations.

Also worthy of a double-take, however, given Penny’s aesthetic, technical and critical success, is the fact that Re Figured is only the first AGO solo show for this masterful local.

Re Figured was actually developed by German curator Daniel J. Schreiber, who premiered it at the Kunsthalle Tubingen in June 2011, then toured it to Austria’s Museum der Moderne Salzburg and Italy’s Museo delle Arti Cantanzaro before its final stop here.

Yet Penny, who turns 60 next year, is gracious about his hometown gallery having taken a while to honour his achievements.

“Probably all artists would say it [the recognition] always comes too late, right?” he says, smiling. “But I think, in fact, this is kind of perfect timing.”

For the full story, read on at thestar.com.

(Image of Evan Penny with his work Old Self: Portrait of the Artist as He Will (Not) Be #1, Variation of 4, 2010 © Evan Penny 2012)