Les Newman: Major Solo Retrospective

January 15 – April 2, 2009  |  Curated by Cliff Eyland

Les Newman lives in Winnipeg. He was born in Stephenville, Newfoundland, attended college at Lambton College, Sarnia, Ontario, and graduated with a BFA (major: studio, minor: art history) from the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Since 1994 he has shown in group and solo exhibitions in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and Alberta. He has also been the recipient of several provincial and federal arts grants.

Newman is perhaps most widely known for works shown at Plug In Inc several years ago that dealt with his experiences as a telephone market researcher. Since then much of his work has consisted of computer drawings and graphics that he re-photographs so that the finished work is at several removes from its digital source. Since 2000, he has done this photo/digital work, but most recently he has been making paintings that build on the methodologies of his previous text and digital prints.

Although Newman has shown widely, this Gallery One One One exhibition is his first public gallery survey and the first time that his work is being shown art Gallery One One One.

"I first encountered Les Newman's name inscribed in felt marker on a microwave oven at the Khyber Gallery in Halifax. It read: 'Les Newman Memorial Microwave.' He was well-known in Halifax for organizing raves at the Khyber with the artist Kelly Mark. Before he moved to Winnipeg Les was a force to be reckoned with in the Halifax art scene, and true to form, he has also become a legendary underground figure in Winnipeg. He has made, for example, art about drugs -- including a set of drawings made under the influence of various intoxicants -- as well as charts about states of mind. His digital works can't be accurately apprehended through reproduction, and so he makes plain what digital culture often obscures."

— Cliff Eyland

"In my earlier series Clouds, I photographed directly from a computer screen in order to create a decidedly 'low-fi-high-tech image.' The Science Drawings included finer details, more drawing elements, and smaller text while still retaining the original photo's exaggerated pixelation and distortion. The Science Drawings focus on themes of alienation, abandonment, and loss, (usually with a twice-removed reference to a pop-song lyric, self help passage, or other popism/truism). In combining these misanthropic sentiments with humour, brightly coloured scientific models/charts/graphs, and pat explanations, my intention has not been to reduce, but to diffuse these seemingly solitary experiences as universal paradigms. Jealousy, nervousness, nostalgia, inspiration, this is the stuff of our emotions -- how we feel. Trying to quantify such sensations, let alone illustrate them visually, graphically, becomes an absurdity, yet we feel compelled at times to do so."

— Les Newman

  • Four artworks on a wall, comprising sans-serif text on coloured backgrounds. Clockwise from the top left, they read “just blowing smoke up your ass” in lowercase light beige text on a stained light beige background, “distill art history” in lowercase light beige text on a light brown background with some dark spots, “unleash the hounds” in light red text on a dark red streaked background, and “get loaded go off” in uppercase white text on a dark beige background covered in dark spots.
  • Four framed charts. The top left depicts an atom splitting, captioned “atomic process of ennui colliding, and fucking with inspiration”. The top right is a graph with descending lines labelled “going, going, gone.”. The bottom left depicts a molecule made up of atoms labelled with varying years, labelled “molecular structure of giving up”. The bottom right is a blue pie chart split in three sections, with a legend reading “everything to everyone”, “something to someone”, and “nothing to noone”.
  • Four artworks on a wall, comprising colourful dotted textures obscuring uppercase captions. Clockwise from the top left, they read “don’t you just hate it when the ‘I don’t normally party’ people start to party?” in white text, “top secret two step program to ensure happiness 1. Collect vices 2. Maintain vices” in black text, “well, I guess there is nothing left to do but put away the bottles, sweep up the eyeballs and lock the front door” in white text, and “I can’t wait to see his mature work.”
  • Three artworks, comprising dots obscuring captions reading “oh, you know the art world. It’s hard really trying to shake off last night’s hangover. While running to catch the bus to tonight’s orgy.”, “all that time spent at all those jobs to make all that money to buy all those drugs just to have all the same hallucinations as all those other people”, and “another night wasted entertaining a seemingly endless parade of genies who in the end didn’t have a single wish to grant between the lot of them”.

Events:

  • Reception: January 14, 5:00–8:00 PM
  • Artist talk: January 14, 8:00 PM


 Publications and Press:

 

Exhibition Archive (Downloadable PDF)