An exhibition of acrylic-painted portals at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery wields gravity of its own. Colourful abstracts by a trio of Vancouver-area artists are inspired by physical forces and everyday furnishings that lead across invisible thresholds.
A Mysterious Attraction includes works by Edzy Edzed, Pierre Leichner and Bill Westwell. Leichner attended the exhibition’s official opening on Oct. 7, explaining that his choice of substrate was literally unhinged. As Romanian-born Leichner and his wife renovated a heritage house in North Vancouver, they removed all the doors.
“I said I’m going to keep them,” Leichner recalled. “I like objects. And I read that a physicist said gravitational waves may open the door to our understanding of the universe. We don’t really don’t understand or know what it’s about, or have theories about how to represent that artistically.”
Leichner began working with artist Edzy Edzed, who had sublimated a background in trades and commercial art into distinctive expression using gouged and painted wooden panels. The two began spinning doors on a potter’s wheel while applying acrylic paint. The result, either as static works like Double Whamy or multimedia installations like Gravitational Wave Generator, is an explosion of whorls and tendrils that ripple from a paint-thick nucleus.
“My personal goal is exploring techniques and various aesthetics that can inspire others to see our universe in new and different ways,” said Edzed in a statement about the show.
Leichner and Edzed also render black holes using flat paint and flocking powder. Edzed’s Hubble’s View of Spacetime shows multidimensional froth ringing an inky hub. In other acrylic works like Orange Fetus Nebula, cosmic light fills a gouged plywood surface in a palette that blends deep-space hues with viridescent shades of earth. Liechner’s Gravitation Door #09 features twin starbursts on a sliding door, its plastic lock tantalizingly unlatched.
As they developed the series, the duo met Bill Westwell. Westwell had attended Emily Carr University’s Continuing Studies program after a back injury that required spinal fusion surgery. In 2022, he wrote and illustrated a book for children (Bean) about coping with chronic pain.
Westwell’s richly coloured canvases, like Dragon Pour and Root of it All, enlarge the otherworldly themes of Leichner and Edzed while foreshadowing his latest work that explores the tension between spontaneity and structure.
“Bill is probably the most scientific person among the three of us,” said Leichner. “He actually knows the weight of the pigments and he knows when he applies the mixture which pigment will sink to the bottom and which will rise, creating the effects you see.”
Leichner has personally pursued the theme of limitlessness. In 2011 he transitioned from a career in medicine to become a full-time artist, and founded the Vancouver Outsider Arts Festival six years ago. “I believe art has lost its place to science, business, and entertainment as a way of knowing,” he said. “That probably wasn’t such a good thing. It would have been good if science and art stayed together. But [now] they’re starting to come closer.”
A Mysterious Attraction remains on display at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery until Oct. 29.
