Jeffrey Bishop, Fathom Compression #18, 2020, acrylic and ink on synthetic substrate, 60 x 44 inches
What is painting magic? How do we recognize it? What is it good for?
These questions arise from thinking about the work of Jeffery Bishop and Mason Dowling in their current two-person exhibition. Both artists employ painterly processes of their own invention, creating personal genres of image making that move us beyond wondering “How did they do that?”. Part of the fascination engendered by both artists is the slight-of-hand of seductive effects, misdirecting us while something else is transpiring, just beyond our conscious awareness.
In Bishop’s case, a silkscreened or collaged image often become a central motif, with a seemingly generative power to create a confounding visual field in turmoil around it. In the artist’s two large Fathom Compression pieces, a complex, symmetrical, silkscreened form anchors the billowing of diluted ink, a mysterious grisaille realm of liquid of pools and crevasses. The innermost form can be read as a kind of holy monster, or wizard behind the screen, whose identity is subsumed by the tempest he creates. Both the ink’s unpredictable flow, and the work’s title alert us that we have entered a realm of consciousness where sinking into its depths carries both wonders and perils.
Jeffrey Bishop, Sidewinder #6, 2026, acrylic and collage on wood panel, 117 1/2 x 13 1/2 inches
In Bishop’s Sidewinder series, a writhing, nubile form, applied to the painting’s surface as a chine collé, moves like a spill of mercury or a dancing, cybernetic demon. This avatar rules over a small kingdom whose landscape is comprised of an archive of the artist’s favored graphic motifs. In Sidewinder #6 a snaky cadmium red shape overlays Bishop’s spears, streamings, and distressed surfaces.
Jeffrey Bishop, Interval #8, 2026, acrylic and collage on cotton on wood panel, 24 x 18 inches
Bishop’s Interval pieces are perhaps the most intimate and personal works here. In these paintings, cotton on panel act as a kind of private diary, carrying a gritty atmosphere of grayed tendrils acrylic, fragments of vibratory waves, and trapezoids studded with peaked studs of silver paint. In Interval #8, shards of white wings float high above the miasma that they have escaped.
Mason Dowling, Barnacle Candy, 2026, acrylic and paper on wood panel with artist-made wood frame, 11 x 9 inches
Mason Dowling creates hallucinatory paintings with a deceptively simple method – cut paper affixed to a panel, squeegeed with passes of color. The result is a gorgeous field of flaring hues that appear and fade away unpredictably. Complicating matters, the cutaway shapes catch darkness within them, spilling shadows onto the surrounding surface. The effect is a kind of solarization, with negative and positive trading places within a single painting.
For all their beauty, there is a sublimated fierceness at work here, with the sharp forms cut into the surface, and the charred shadows that threatens the streaks of cerise, scarlet, and gold. There is, as well, a kind of temptation at work: we are asked against our better judgement to trade the pleasure of looking, only to find the risk that lurks as the price of the bargain.
Mason Dowling, Ptarmigan, 2024, acrylic and paper on wood panel with artist-made wood frame, 11 x 9 inches
A number of the painting feature a softened, almost blurred appearance that seems to allude to the natural world, specifically to the high desert of New Mexico, where the artist was raised. We can see in these and other paintings the weathered geology, the powerful light, and scorching heat of this environment.
Two of Dowling’s largest works are structured by an all-over field of vertical lines, perhaps off-printed from corrugated cardboard. Cutt (Trucha) combines cut forms with these deep striations, and a shimmering, almost iridescent sunset light, an evocation of the cutthroat trout, native to the American West.
Both Bishop and Dowling share a version of painting magic that allows them to conjure, through abstract, material means their own psychic dominions, into which we are induced to enter.
Mason Dowling, Cutt (Trucha), 2025, acrylic and paper on polyester, 60 x 48 inches
A lifetime devoted to artistry. The illustrious Sybil Goldstein (1954-2012) currently having a retrospective of a lifetime of painting and artistic endeavours. A dedicated artist that couldn’t stop working and creating. She created art everyday leaving a massive collection of paintings, drawings, and works on board, canvas, and paper. The exhibition showcases Goldstein’s previously unseen pieces to the public, celebrating her vital role in Toronto’s cultural narrative.
Sybil Goldstein
Sybil Goldstein / URBAN MYTHS, an extensive exhibition showcasing her life’s work. Curated by David Liss, it is currently on display at Koffler Arts from January 20th to March 1st, 2026. “By bringing her long-hidden pieces into public view, the exhibition not only honours Goldstein’s remarkable legacy but also reaffirms her place within the cultural history of Toronto and the wider artistic movements that shaped her generation ,” says Liss.
A number of her works were sold at an auction that took place shortly after her passing. Any pieces that did not sell — which comprised the majority of her artistic creations, amounting to over a thousand works — were kept by her family. Now, thirteen years following her death, Sybil’s family is seeking assistance within the Toronto art community in finding homes for the many pieces of art within the estate.
Sybil Goldstein,College Street at 2:00am, 2000, oil on canvas, 172.7 x 198.12 cm
Koffler Arts, an organization that champions community initiatives, has made the decision to present this posthumous retrospective. It is especially noteworthy that an unprecedented exhibition is currently being held, providing visitors with the opportunity to take home one of her original artworks following the exhibition’s conclusion. The family due to the difficulty in marketing art regards the monetary significance in the Canadian art market as nonexistent; however curators and scholars are visually able to identify the significant importance of the art works placement and contributions to the Canadian identity. On a personal level, the artwork carries a charm that resonates with personal feelings and interpretations, permitting individuals to choose an image that will resonate within their homes, enrich their spirits, and ideally bring joy to their lives.
Sybil Goldstein, Untitled, Lion Killing Its Prey, pastel on paper, 83.8 x 115.6 cm
While pausing silently to appreciate the artworks showcased in a salon-style arrangement within the exhibition, one experiences an uncanny feeling that Goldstein is somehow present. In the midst of the admiration permeating the room, one can detect a pleasurable enjoyment alongside an intellectual appreciation for the contrasting elements within the pieces that embellish the walls. Furthermore, there is an element of empty calmness, as if the traces of her journey are indicative of having traversed a difficult path. It is this essence that generates a lingering admiration for a talent that clearly was well accomplished.
Sybil Goldstein:, Satyr Family Overlooking the Don Valley, 1984, oil on canvas, 152.4 x 121.92 cm
Sybil concentrated her artistic efforts on urban culture, depicting individuals at street corners engaged in their everyday activities, alongside the interiors of offices, bars, subway stations, and shopping malls, wooded areas, and neglected spaces. Numerous scenes featured mythological beings such as angels, satyrs, and spirits. Additionally, she drew inspiration from classical old masters like El Greco, Velasquez, and Rubens.
Sybil Goldstein, After El Greco, 1991, oil on canvas, 50.8 x 40.64 cm
Covering surfaces of canvas, paper, or on board, her lively lines and occasionally hurried, rugged brushwork reflect an artist’s pursuit to encapsulate the fleeting movements and moments of her life, illustrated through images like Satyr Family Overlooking the Don Valley, After El Greco, Dundas Windows A&B-Birth of an Angel, Untitled-Lion Killing It’s Prey, College Street at 2:00am, Queen & Roncesvalles, Adelaide & Spadina, Spadina & Dundas, Dufferin Mall, Queen & Yonge, Joe Shuster Way, Union Station, among others, depicting various locations in downtown Toronto.
Sybil Goldstein, Dundas Windows A&B, Birth of an Angel, 1982, oil on canvas, 50.8 x 40.64 cm
In 1981 Goldstein was one of the founding members of the ChromaZone Collective, along with Andy Fabo, Oliver Girling, Rae Johnson, Brian Burnett, Tony Wilson, and others, who organized exhibitions and events that were characterized by their support of a figurative Neo-expressionist movement gaining international recognition during their early years.
It is important to note that Goldstein was the artist responsible for the stunning Sistine Chapel-inspired artwork on the ceiling of the Cameron House located on Queen Street West. Goldstein passed away unexpectedly on July 2, 2012.
Luís Almeida’s paintings have an uneasy joyfulness to them. His narratives occupy the space between pure, unfiltered emotion and wild interpretations run amok.
Luís Almeida, Untitled (chinatown) (2025), pencil on paper, 29,7 x 21 cm, 11 ⅔ x 8 ¼ inches, all photos courtesy of the artist
Almeida creates an alternate space where the act of painting churns, spews and whips around the canvas until reality is overtaken, leaving the outside world in its wake. His subjects push through the edge of representation, forming a new bio-logic based on instinct. Yet, with all his gnarly techniques and bizarre color theory, the resulting vignettes remain almost completely without judgement – a purity of thought on canvas without the fuss of overthinking one rarely sees in Contemporary Art.
Almeida is the quintessential observer/translator, reacting solely in the studio where the loaded brush meets the waiting canvas – that physical application of paint in an electrified moment beyond his initial observations to an alternative world. There is a lot of discussion by physicists today, of as many as 11 unifying forces that make up our universe. The way Almeida breaks down and reconstructs his constantly shifting and morphing subject matter surely passes through some of this extended space physics advance.
Luís Almeida, Horseman (2025), oil on canvas, 190 x 160 cm, 74 ¾ x 63 inches
Take for instance the painting Horseman (2025). Here we see a bucking horse protesting the sword of its rider as it threatens to behead someone hanging onto the horse’s leg below. What initially draws the eye into this whirlwind of motion is the purity of the diamond-shaped white form that the rider and the horse share. This relatively ‘clean’ space promises to offer safety in an otherworldly place, but the protagonist in this drama has other ideas in mind. In the end, it’s the three areas of blue that create a classic pyramid of stability that keeps this topsy turvy composition from exploding outwardly.
Luís Almeida, Happy Family (2025), oil on canvas, 160 x 190 cm, 63 x 74 ¾ inches
Happy Family (2025) has its share of tension as well, only in this instance it is overpowered by love. Challenging this state of bliss in the background, where we have a few indications of the seedier side of life rendered in drippy washes of color. Additionally, a sinister hand creeps in through the bottom right of the composition to create more tension. Despite all the unwanted intrusions to this otherwise buoyant scene, it is the love of family signified by a new born babe that keeps the positivity afloat.
Luís Almeida, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (2025), 160 x 190 cm, 63 x 74 ¾ inches
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (2025) has its own, more subtle brand of bizarreness. Almeida reigns in his energy level just enough to focus the narrative to the more mundane aspects of life. We have all seen group photos of children related by some function or form. I am guessing this one is related to a sporting event where the teacher/coach and the school principal are overseeing the proceedings. Oddly, the principal, if that is who he is, with his dark sunglasses and a black suit, looks more like a security guard than an educator. What is most fascinating in School Children are the individual faces and how they all express such completely different personalities. Shy, confused, happy, lost in thought and miserable, each child commands their allotted space while their uniform dress and the similarly colored background creates a profound push/pull effect.
Luís Almeida, a painter ‘s painter who challenges himself as much as he does the viewer.
Lorien Suarex-Kanerva, Wheel within a Wheel 114 (2017), acrylic, 40 x 40 inches
Artifice and systems of geometric complexity artfully coexist in the paintings of Lorien Suarez-Kanerva. They are passionately endowed manifestations of a world filled with symbolic structures that press so heavily upon one another that they give birth to new generations of form. The artist’s search for universal meaning brings us into metaphysical thickets and continuums of transcendent form. The experience they engender is called Liminality, in which travelling over a threshold between radically different environments, one feels a great unease. This is the conscious mind confronting subconscious understanding. Suarez is confronting oblivion in her paintings, and in portraying the elements that comprise its infinity, she bypasses liminality to realize a dynamic grace.
Lorien Suarex-Kanerva, Elan Flow 5 (2019), acrylic, 60 x 60 inches
Suarez-Kanerva’s current retrospective, New Spiritual Abstraction, emerges not only through her own complex ministrations, but from a legacy within art history itself. Beginning with Wassily Kandinsky and continuing to the present time, there has been a strain of spiritual endeavor in art that has touched every generation. Each artist within the legacy of this spiritual endeavor has used the basic elements of composition to reach through form into meaning and beyond. When artists say “spiritual” they are in fact regarding religiosity without its attendant connection to creed. There’s a very idiosyncratic drive within each that connects these forms and gestures to a more introspective and complex perspective. What’s required is an innate ability, even a native aptitude, toward the use of form for the discernment of truth. Yet what is equally required is the willingness to continuously engage with progressively transformed models that may easily slip into new visions.
Suarez-Kanerva chooses the widest possible subject–the universe, because in choosing actual objects or real places there are always symbolic aspects or specific narratives applied to them. The universe is both a theme and a palette waiting to be portrayed. But as human beings we cannot throw off all association, all metaphor; some ideas are inherently part of our personal and collective identity. In denying symbolism, Suarez merely makes more room for it to creep in.
Lorien Suarex-Kanerva, Wheel within a Wheel 69 (2009), watercolor and gouache, 12 x 9 inches
There’s a patchwork quality the Wheel Within A Wheel works that suggests a communal strategizing for construction, like that of an Exquisite Corpse. The combination of so many different mediums resulting in an image that seems inherently unfinished. It’s important to collect all these types of imagery into one composition to show the complexity of perception. The imperfect image is proof that knowledge is only as finite as the quality of encounter possible in our own overt evolutionary state. Not every area of the image needs to be filled in. There must be some room left for changes in the future.
Her Elan Flow series depicts from its very first image, the forces at work that invisibly shape recognizable matter in the universe, identify waves of gravity and other radiation flowing like eddies and tides from one planet to another. They are painted not as spheres but as flat spherical forms resembling targets. Placed in close proximity to one another, a view of an overt multiplicity, they become a tapestry of undulating forces. As Suarez-Kanerva moves from one painting to the next in this series, she alters the forms minutely so that we can perceive the formal changes as if they were interstellar gradations in the growth of a galaxy, like a cosmic petri dish. This is the quantum character of transformative material growth, which happens equally at the grandest and the most infinitesimal scale simultaneously. Suarez-Kanerva’s engagement with the forces at play beyond everyday human life, viewable only via a Hubble telescope, or through evidence taken down by a deep space satellite like Voyager, whose travels dwarf understanding, and can only relay images in modes of transfer now decades old.
Lorien Suarex-Kanerva, Wheel within a Wheel 15 (2003), watercolor, 29 x 18 inches
In her Wheel Within A Wheel series, we are presented with a progressively developed series of images that likewise countenance the intimate details of cosmic or chemical interactions that hidebound to the very essential aspects of life itself. Suarez-Kanerva’s attempts to revisit and reclaim the pictorial authority she began in the Elan Flow series. But instead of attempting to capture the forms of space, she actualizes the complexity and dynamism of interacting psychological spheres at the outset. The types of depiction range more broadly and are contingent not of idealised forms finding their place in the depths of space, but metaphysical reckonings that take into account the very fabric of reality, its density and its detailed temperament, and allows us to peer into the layers themselves. Suarez-Kanerva’s search for meaning has led her through various versions of a focused objective: to manifest the immense forces that exist in the greater universe beyond earth, of which our planet likewise partakes. Wheel Within A Wheel suggests an infinite order arranged around a cyclical progression, driving immense forces. Yet what is collectively expressed in the greater variety of these works are many diverse and divergent strains of life, all coexisting within the multiversal context of existence, inherently cooperative in the play between complex models ostensibly realized.
Lorien Suarex-Kanerva, Wheel within a Wheel 47 (2007), watercolor and gouache on Arches hot press paper, 62 x 45 inches
The spiritual aspect of Suarez-Kanerva’s aesthetic is not merely a theme, it is an organizational and moral imperative. Art in her hands connects the viewer to their essential humanism–the aptitude and potential for the expressive realization of belief. The artist’s compulsion to depict nature beyond the sphere of shared experience invites our imagination to cross over liminal pathways into new worlds. The future beckons us from other planes of existence, of which Suarez-Kanerva allows a mere glimpse as she unlocks the doors of perception. Her forms are exemplary choices in the game of ultimate fate. She shines a light through the keyhole, illuminating the path forward. Beauty and knowledge await us in the great beyond.
Visionary Geometry at The Phillips Museum of Museum of Art in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, January 20-April 23, 2026
Himeka Murai, “After Slope (LES)” (2025), mixed media with discarded slope from gallery onetwentyeight, 24 x 14 x 3.5 inches
Thirty-three painters and sculptors from New York gather for an eclectic group exhibition at Gallery Onetwentyeight to have a genuine conversation about what constitutes truth and sincerity in the form of art in our post-truth era.
What is real? What is art? What is real and truthful about an artistic vision or visual style, if it can be mimicked by data-harvesting and analyzing artificial intelligence? Who is an artist, if machines can outdo humans in their own invention of critical thinking and authentic imagery?
Does truth exist as a great virtue and a guiding principle for humanity, if it can be easily mimicked and distorted for sinister aims via fake news and AI-generated content?
It is the human capacity for emotion and feeling that sets apart the likes of the artists featured in this exhibit, from the common antithesis in the future, which would be an advanced, general AI. No matter how smart the general intelligence would be, and regardless of how efficiently it would measure, calculate, and connect, it would not be able to feel and experience as the observer and actor with a consciousness and a soul. The machine would be able to map out the relationships between the signifier and the signified, but it would not be able to feel and experience what is being signified.
Himeka Murai makes a highly experimental and hybrid sculpture titled, “After Slope (LES)” (2025), that incorporates a site-specific found object – the discarded slope from Gallery Onetwentyeight itself. It is a noble effort to pay tribute to the lessons of Eva Hesse’s mixed media and sculptural pieces working within a post minimalist and feminist language or framework. The Japanese American artist transforms the post modern language into one of poetic sincerity, honest record and memory, nostalgic affection, and discovery. Transparent photo prints of Gallery Onetwentyeight and the rundown scenes of the surrounding neighborhood tape to the various locations and landmarks of the piece. The rectangular form attaches to the wall by means of hinges and can open like a door, similar to previous, older paintings by Jan Dickey (Murai’s partner).
The work simultaneously invites the viewer and recollects the fact that the artist has existed in this space, that the artist made her mark here. The work gently proclaims her presence and allows the traces of her voice felt through her vision by the viewers through the intermediary that is the artwork. The work is the outcome of a gatherer collecting bits and pieces of objects that signify both existence and memory. It is a form of re-collection, in which the past (of memory), the present (of the existence in the now), and the future (in the form of dialogue with people who will come after us) coincide in the same object.
Dasha Bazanova, “Carpet” (2025), ceramic, 9 x 17 x 16 inches
Dasha Bazanova, a Russian American sculptor, exhibits her breakthrough piece titled, “Carpet” (2025), depicting a puppy situated on a carpet alongside two pokeballs and a dead chicken android. The work is a continuation of her previous works that depicted sculptural portraits of animal characters with a wonky twist, like her depiction of a goat with disorienting, bulging eyes. But the content of this particular work operates on an entirely different level of metaphor, psychology, and imagery. In this work, Bazanova no longer simply describes within the format of a portrait; she now makes strong commentaries and asks questions that bridge the knowns and the unknowns. In this work, the artist’s gestures feel profound, and her vision, iconic.
The dog is not an ordinary dog, but it is a character with a readable personality or psychology, transformed by the cartoonistic style or iconographic language that carries the vector of furryness, juvenile innocence, and cuteness (something like kawaii culture in Japan but the American version of it). The chicken is a hilariously and comically conceived dead object that is simultaneously alive, like an oxymoron.
Why are there pokeballs thrown on the carpet? Did the dog and the chicken come from the pokeballs? Are the creatures actually something like pokemon, which can be captured or tamed from the wild and summoned to perform tasks at will?
What is the nature of pets, which become objects of love, care, and affection, and what is the nature of food, like chicken, who go through slaughter houses and we think nothing of this tacitly orchestrated holocaust of animals? What are we to judge the level of consciousness of other animals, who has a soul and who doesn’t, and which animals get to live (and which must die)? What will an all-powerful machine like the Terminator do with this kind of precedent set by us humans? What is the artist even saying if she is not a vegan herself?
Sarah Belleview, “Self Portrait as Witch,” acrylic, beads, oil on canvas, 22 x 28 inches
Sarah Belleview’s “Self Portrait as a Witch” (year unknown) is fictional, highly fantasized portrait painting of the artist herself also rendered in a semi-cartoonistic style, similar to the ones found in a board game or an illustrated children’s storybook. The portrait is very vulnerable and sensitive yet also genuine and authentic not only because the artist is depicted as a nude and riding a big broomstick, but also the cartoonistic style contains a great deal of human fragility and conflicting emotions. It is very hard to discern if the figure’s smile is in pure delight or sad defeat because a strong form of sadness is imbued in the smile, and the figure is so full of imperfections, embracing her flawed human self, that she requires protection of all those who see her sight in the night sky, rather than condemnation as a witch. This is the question of whether to protect someone for their flaws or differences, or to condemn, ridicule, and alienate them. The artist, who proudly identifies as a magical witch, similarly asks, fight or flight? The artist is brave to accept her vulnerability and her difference, and she is also brave to fight and flight for different reasons. Oppositely, the cowards would fight, and those spineless bullies would also take flight, for the same reason that they are immature and weak, unable to accept individual differences and uniqueness.
In a post-truth era, truth still matters. In a world soon to be dominated and designed by machines, the human is still the center for many of us, not because of power but due to our colors and flawed nature, which furnish us with the choice to be strong and the power to understand our own free will. Art is a humanistic endeavor, after all. When we feel and think, we live. When we strive for truth and justice, we prevail, and humanity makes progress.
The Artists: Mother Pigeon, Carol Diamond, Sarah Fuhrman, Felix Morelo, Lane Twitchell, Tyrome Tripoli, Michelle Rosenberg, Rachel Yanku, Carmen Cicero, Rosabel Ferber, Frank Olt, Rosie Lopeman, Dasha Bazanova, Noelle Velez, Keisha Prioleau-Martin, James Prez, Kerry Law, Marcus Glitteris, Ryan Dawalt, Dean Cerone, Himeka Murai, Charlotte Bravin Lee, Luke Atkinson, Candice Spry, Miriam Carothers, Joy Curtis, Mike Olin, Jeanne Tremel, Isabelle Schneider, Nancy Elsamanoudi, Roberta Fineberg, FA-Q, Zak Vreeland
