SUNNY DAZE - Reception - December 9th 2016, 6-9pm / Will Kucey Gallery

Jan Ollner’s new series of paintings, “Sunny Daze,” both triggers and resists nostalgia. Drawing from his own photographs and those posted on social media, Ollner uncovers a common narrative thread. The banality of Western vacation culture is revealed through images of sandy beaches, palm trees and pools. Ollner manipulates trendy compositions, forcing the viewer to question the pervasiveness of unoriginal online content. He explores today’s visual rhetoric – images that are repeatedly produced, shared and “liked” – so as to reveal our symbols of cultural homogeny and digital escapism.

Social media has allowed highly distorted personal narratives to thrive, as people curate their visual identities to reflect an unachievable ideal. These images are then organized and consumed in such a way that appeals to one's narrow aesthetic sensibilities. Ollner addresses this duality of fact and fiction by creating uncanny personas and places, using the medium of painting, one that acknowledges the manipulations inherent to image production.

This series thus challenges the idea of documentary truth. Each painting reflects a collage of events, places and people, creating a surreal universe of icons, lost in painterly abstraction and devoid of singular meaning. Achieving a balance between the application of paint and narrative is a significant aspect of Ollner’s artistic process. Pushing the boundaries of conventional representation, Ollner uses painting as a means to escape past influences. Stencils, hardware tools, and loose brushwork are used to disrupt the image making process in order to create a dialogue between abstraction and figuration. Ollner’s work reveals our collective landscape of dreams, where flora and fauna stand like monuments of a shared utopia.

Jan Ollner was born in Vancouver, British Colombia. He moved to Montreal, Quebec where he completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2008. This is Jan's first solo exhibition with Wil Kucey Gallery and his second of 2016. Ollner lives and works in Toronto, Ontario.