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Contemporary Art Gallery

555 Nelson Street
Vancouver, Canada
Open from Tuesday to
Sunday 12 pm → 6 pm

Admission always free
ArchiveExhibition
10 Jul 99until21 Aug 99

Janet Werner

Trust

555 Hamilton St

A painted portrait on canvas depicting a person wearing a yellow T-shirt on a light blue background.

Janet Werner lives and works in Saskatoon and has exhibited widely across Canada. During the past decade, her work consisted of series of small paintings depicting icons of everyday life rendered in a style that played between abstraction and figuration and installed salon-style.

The paintings in the exhibition Trust mark a shift in direction for Werner. By exploring the painted portrait, she works with a genre that receives little acknowledgement in contemporary art, and which is often deemed exhausted in a world dominated by photographic and digital imagery. While clearly referencing the history of this genre, her intentions depart from it. Werner's portraits are not of actual individuals, but are composed of half-remembered, half-imagined faces. Staring outward into space, these subjects suggest inward psychological states of consciousness. And by employing characteristics that are hauntingly familiar, Werner strives to create portraits that are convincing as a representation of persona. Coupled with her interest in making portraits is an interest in the formal issues. The use of strong monochromatic backgrounds, for example, brings into play a relationship between abstraction and representation. As such, these portraits are as much about the process of painting and looking, as they are about the representation of people.

Biography

Janet Werner was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba and studied in Toronto, Banff and Baltimore before completing her MFA at Yale University in New Haven. Werner is currently Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing in the Department of Art History at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. Janet Werner is represented by the Paul Kuhn Gallery, Calgary and the Robert Birch Gallery, Toronto.

Three portrait paintings are exhibited on the galley walls. The one in the front has a red-eyed person in a pink background, and the one on the left is a woman in black standing in a brown background.
Three portrait paintings are exhibited on the galley walls. The left one is a blue-skinned man, the tiny one in the middle is a woman with grey hair. The one on the right is orange.
Three portrait paintings are exhibited on the galley walls. The left one is a woman in the yellow background. The middle one is a close-up of a woman’s face. The one on the right is blue.
Three portrait paintings are exhibited on the galley walls. The left one is a woman in a brown background, the middle one is a man in a blue background. The one on the right is a woman in black.
Five portrait paintings are visible in this photograph. The large-sized painting on the left depicts a man in a yellow T-shirt standing in a blue background. His eyes are looking away.
Three portrait paintings are installed on the gallery walls. The one in the front is a short-haired person standing in an orange background, wearing a white shirt and looking straight at the viewer.
A painted portrait on canvas depicting a person wearing a yellow T-shirt on a light blue background.
Three portrait paintings are exhibited on the galley walls. The one in the front has a red-eyed person in a pink background, and the one on the left is a woman in black standing in a brown background.
Three portrait paintings are exhibited on the galley walls. The left one is a blue-skinned man, the tiny one in the middle is a woman with grey hair. The one on the right is orange.
Three portrait paintings are exhibited on the galley walls. The left one is a woman in the yellow background. The middle one is a close-up of a woman’s face. The one on the right is blue.
Three portrait paintings are exhibited on the galley walls. The left one is a woman in a brown background, the middle one is a man in a blue background. The one on the right is a woman in black.
Five portrait paintings are visible in this photograph. The large-sized painting on the left depicts a man in a yellow T-shirt standing in a blue background. His eyes are looking away.
Three portrait paintings are installed on the gallery walls. The one in the front is a short-haired person standing in an orange background, wearing a white shirt and looking straight at the viewer.