Friday, April 27, 2007

Andy Haynes at The Venice Contemporary



Jeesh, it's taken me all week to write about last weekend's openings! My last entry is from our last gallery of the evening, The Venice Contemporary. Yet another new gallery for me, it's part art gallery, part uber-hipster party spot. We actually saw Ryan Gosling there. It's heartening to see an opening full of young-ish people, and a lot of them were actually in the gallery, not on the back patio where they could be smoking and listening to the band.

Of course, there was a great reason to linger in the gallery - it's full of really great works by a bunch of emerging artists who are up to their eyeballs in talent. The show features work by four artists, and you can read all about them here, but the one I really clicked with was Andy Haynes.

Just a wee lad of 25 years old, Haynes already shows a technical skill that I expect to see in much more experienced artists. His figures live in hazy dreamscapes that are at once creepy and beautiful, mysterious and whimsical. This image, Skipping Stones, is a great example. A girl, wearing a horned hood, standing beneath a stormy sky and at the edge of an ominous body of water, holds a book whose tattered pages transform into moths that fly through her windowed body. Cool! I love Haynes' work, and can't wait to see what lies ahead in his artistic career.

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