Loui Penfold
Sepal
Sept 29 - Oct 5
Remote Gallery
568 Richmond St W
Gallery B

Gallery hours: 10 AM - 9 PM

Sepal is an exploration of emotional states, traced through the body as both a place of experience and a container of habit. These works examine how vices and mental weight function as forces that can both erode and reconstruct the self. I am interested in the tension between destruction and protection, the ways in which we undo ourselves, and the systems we build to survive that undoing.

The title Sepal refers to the outer layer of a flower in its earlier stages, a protective layer that shields the bud before it opens. I see these habits and emotional patterns as a kind of sepal - an exterior mechanism that guards something more fragile underneath. They keep us safe, but also restrict growth. Within the paintings, this bouncing between protection and suffocation, healing and harm, control and collapse, is often constant.

The figure becomes a central element where these contradictions play out. Bodies are opened, fragmented, or exposed, revealing skeletal and internal forms that point to vulnerability and memory. These anatomical references are not literal, but symbolic, suggesting the permeability between inner experience and outward identity. In some works, figures are caught in repetitive gestures, caught between compulsion and reflection; in others, they appear staged within constructed environments that feel both intimate and unstable.

Ultimately, Sepal is about containment, what we hold in, what we let out, and what protects us from being fully exposed. The works invite viewers into spaces that feel familiar but unsettled, asking them to consider their own systems of protection and the habits that shape their emotional lives.