current exhibition

unraveling under conditions of uncertainty : kristine moran

Kristine Moran. "Flash Flood" 2008. 38 x 28 inches. oil on canvas

Kristine Moran's currant work references literature, film and mythology to help form the main narrative that runs through out her painting. Moran creates anthropomorphic characters comprised of fragments of shelter, transportation and animal parts, which she situates within a contentious site of struggle. Through paint, Moran reveals her fascination with human nature's innate region, from which comes the ability to transform oneself into something seemingly incomprehensible or violent as a need for survival. Responding to her investigation of the moment where one is pushed to the point of extreme reaction to ones own environment, Moran's paintings visibly express this struggle through communicative and the seemingly urgent quality of the painted gesture, manifested as an additive and subtractive process which is reflective of an internalized struggle while painting. 

Moran establishes calmness through the depicted large empty architectural environments, which recall a familiarity of public places such as airports, office towers lobbies and institutes that by design leads society to respond in an appropriate manner. Within these environments Moran unleashes a crescendo of energy by implanting her struggling creatures of teeth, fur, skin, part moving object, part shelter which exist as an isolated architectural element amongst the vacuous and unforgiving environments.

Kristine Moran graduated with a BFA from Ontario College of Art & Design in 2004 and will have completed her   MFA degree at New York City's Hunter College this spring, culminating with a thesis show on May 2008. Moran has had two previous solo shows at the Angel Gallery in Toronto which both received wide critical acclaim. She has received numerous awards including the RBC New Painting Competition Honorable Mention Award, the Governor General's Academic Medal, the OCAD Drawing and Painting Medalist Scholarship and the 401 Richmond Career-Launcher Prize. Kristine has also recently been nominated for the Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant and has just been awarded the prestigious Mary Walsh Sharpe Foundation studio prize for the upcoming year. Her work is included in private and public collections across Canada and in the US.

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