Allan Switzer's work reflects a refined critical engagement into the specific formal properties and procedures of painting.
A multi-disciplinary artist , Switzer was born in Calgary in 1955 , He is not only the product of Vancouver's post conceptual practices , a philosophy degree from York university in 1977, he is also the byproduct of the second generation Conceptualists of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design who made up a large part of the Emily Carr University faculty during Switzer's time at Emily Carr .
The work he began in graduate school was a kind of pathology . Allan began sifting through the remains of the recently departed (Modernism ). Utilizing the grid as an organizing structure with an aura of film and photography in respect to models of subjectivity . These works suggested a taxonomy of photography in a modernist field , where both the photographs and the modernism are in different ways l corrupted. He continues to explore this broad notion of Pathology to create work that develops these themes but in a subtler more abstract ways. Always ingested in exploring the relations of different levels and kinds of Pathology to their various organizing discourse. Allan's work now conducts a less self conscious inquiry into modes of construction , and reflects a refined critical engagement into the specific formal properties and procedures of painting.
Allan utilizes the motifs of abstraction, minimalism , grids strips and images and sometimes text , these works can read as complex system of reference effecting a collision of signs and elements of disparate painterly discourse. The specific interrelationships of these appropriated parts leave meaning residing nor in some essence or identity but precisely in the interplay of the elements themselves.
The use of text within his work continues to appear discretely in various forms as an exploration of the visual language . Most of Dwtxers'd texts reference 1970's utopian rock lyrics and can be seen within the various stylized patterns of these paintings.
Allan Switzer studied Philosophy at Toronto's York University and obtained a bachelor of fines arts from Vancouver Emily Carr University . He also holds a Masters Degree in Fines Arts from Montreal's Concordia University , Switzer's work in a many private collection throughout Canada and The United States . Mauger Modern in London U.K. Represents Switzer in the U.K.
The Winsor Gallery in Vancouver, Canada
The work he began in graduate school was a kind of pathology . Allan began sifting through the remains of the recently departed (Modernism ). Utilizing the grid as an organizing structure with an aura of film and photography in respect to models of subjectivity . These works suggested a taxonomy of photography in a modernist field , where both the photographs and the modernism are in different ways l corrupted. He continues to explore this broad notion of Pathology to create work that develops these themes but in a subtler more abstract ways. Always ingested in exploring the relations of different levels and kinds of Pathology to their various organizing discourse. Allan's work now conducts a less self conscious inquiry into modes of construction , and reflects a refined critical engagement into the specific formal properties and procedures of painting.
Allan utilizes the motifs of abstraction, minimalism , grids strips and images and sometimes text , these works can read as complex system of reference effecting a collision of signs and elements of disparate painterly discourse. The specific interrelationships of these appropriated parts leave meaning residing nor in some essence or identity but precisely in the interplay of the elements themselves.
The use of text within his work continues to appear discretely in various forms as an exploration of the visual language . Most of Dwtxers'd texts reference 1970's utopian rock lyrics and can be seen within the various stylized patterns of these paintings.
Allan Switzer studied Philosophy at Toronto's York University and obtained a bachelor of fines arts from Vancouver Emily Carr University . He also holds a Masters Degree in Fines Arts from Montreal's Concordia University , Switzer's work in a many private collection throughout Canada and The United States . Mauger Modern in London U.K. Represents Switzer in the U.K.
The Winsor Gallery in Vancouver, Canada