Everywhere All Over is an installation exploring multiples of multiples.
Co-curated by Peter Gynd and Jody MacDonald, Everywhere All Over presents a line of questioning: what occurs during the perception of a particular subject, character, object, or scene when it has been reproduced over and over again by an artist?
The curators Jody MacDonald and Peter Gynd—who also serve as the artists—have each selected a body of work by the other that relates to SPRING/BREAK 2016’s theme of ⌘COPY⌘PASTE. Erring on the side of a visual overload, the installation of Everywhere All Over focuses on presenting multiples of two specific subjects: Jody MacDonald’s bats and Peter Gynd’s trees. While it may seem like an unlikely pairing, the two aesthetic obsessions present a fairy tale-like mismatch of a figurative sculptor curating a forest of multiples from a landscape painter, and a landscape painter curating a colony of figures from a sculptor.
The title is an adaptation of MacDonald’s ongoing project titled Everywhere All Over. All Over. Everywhere. Spanning several years of experimentation and production, MacDonald’s series—inspired by the ecological demise of myotis lucifugus (little brown bat)—was brought to fruition during a residency on Governors Island in 2022. The little brown bat, which suffers from White Nose Syndrome—a fungus that activates bats’ metabolism and wakes them outside of their feeding cycle—is in declining populations across North America due to its impacted sleep.
MacDonald’s persistent musings on what darkly comic and mundane activities the bats might engage in once they awoke drove her to the creation of roughly 400 ten-inch-tall photo-transferred and sewn bat/human hybrid sculptures. Her signature style of small-scale textile works presents a twist on the genre of figurative sculpture and delivers poignant critiques on current social situations. Grouped into multiple tableaux and employing satire as their weapon of choice, the figures lampoon contemporary issues including our abuse of the environment, the decline of women’s and civil rights, our narcissistic obsession with technology, and the escalation of a divided country. While the sheer number of figures draws audiences closer, it’s the deep dive into the miniature details that are the reward. A selection of 380 of these textile bat/human sculptures were chosen by Gynd for the ⌘COPY⌘PASTE theme.
Presenting alongside and amongst these mischievously perched sculptures, MacDonald has selected 40 mostly 10x8-inch plein air oil paintings by Peter Gynd. These intimately painted scenes focus on Gynd’s obsession with the depiction of landscape.
Gynd, a fifth generation classically trained painter, has a history of returning to a specific location to paint multiple versions of the same subject. With a focus on capturing the gesture of nature, Gynd’s recent body of paintings pulls influence from the forests surrounding the rural region of qathet, British Columbia, Canada, mixed with elements of compositions found in the constructed landscapes of urban parks. Traditionally associated as places where the magical and divine dwell, Gynd’s forests are lushly coloured landscapes of quick brushwork and bold strokes. Evidence perhaps of an artist's fury in seeking to capture something which is under constant climate-driven threats.
Landscape has historically been a genre used to depict power and ownership. Examples such as Thomas Gainsborough’s 1750 portrait of Mr and Mrs Andrews show a couple almost pushed to the side of the picture frame to highlight the land they reign over behind them; or paintings by the Group of Seven which were funded by Canadian corporations to advertise westward expansion and settlement. With the mounting climate crisis, landscape painting takes on a new political role in inspiring education and hope, through instigating a connection with the natural world around us.
For this installation RM 1144 has been transformed into a grayscale painted version of New York City, featuring iconic places that no longer exist such as CBGB’s, the Orpheum Theatre, and Ralph’s. Installed in-and-amongst these are MacDonald's perched bats and Gynd’s abstracted landscapes.
The contrast of Gynd’s vibrant landscapes against MacDonald’s densely populated monochromatic cityscape only accentuates the obsessive nature of each artist-curator’s practice of creating and tenaciously pursuing their subject matter.
The goal of this WILD CARD duo’s presentation of Everywhere All Over is to guide the audience on an immersive journey, encouraging them to take Gynd’s “long look” and MacDonald’s “deep dive” into subjects all around us that are constantly under threat.
Bio’s
Peter Gynd is a fifth-generation artist and an independent curator. He grew up amongst the coastal rainforests of western Canada and is known for his paintings that pull influence from his experiences in nature. Peter studied old masters oil painting and classical sculpture at the Vancouver Academy of Art and as an apprentice to his mother, painter Ursula Medley, before pursuing a BFA in Glassblowing from the Alberta College of Art and Design (2006) and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from Brooklyn College in New York City (2022).
At the insistence of his psychic, Peter Gynd relocated to New York City in 2011, set up a studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and began curating for arts organizations. Gynd has since curated extensively at galleries, art fairs, private residences, and institutions. From 2016-20, Gynd was the director at Lesley Heller Gallery, producing exhibitions by world renowned artists and up-and-coming stars. He has been a guest critic at The Art Students League, Residencies Unlimited, Kunstraum, ChaNorth Artist Residency; a consultant with the New York Foundation for the Arts; guest lecture at Pratt Institute and Long Island University Post; and guest juror for numerous exhibitions.
Peter’s work is held in private collections around the world and he has taught painting in Canada, Mexico, the United States and Italy. In 2022 Peter Gynd was a Graduate Teaching Fellow at the CUNY's Brooklyn College and is currently based between Houston, Texas and qathet, British Columbia, Canada.
Jody MacDonald is a mixed-media artist whose practice is a merging of fact, fiction, and contemporary culture. Her intimately scaled works are characterized by dark humor, multiples, and an obsessive attention to detail.
MacDonald is a graduate of the Emily Carr University of Art + Design, located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Her fastidiously crafted work has been exhibited in galleries and artist-run centers across Canada and the US, with solo shows at Radiator Gallery, NY; Galerie Connexion, Fredericton, NB; Acadia University Gallery, Wolfville, NS; Latitude 53 Contemporary Visual Culture, Edmonton, AB; Campbell River Art Gallery, Campbell River, BC; and Fifth Parallel Gallery, Regina, SK. Her mixed media drawings, paintings and sculptures are held in numerous private collections, both nationally and internationally.
MacDonald was a recipient of a New Work Grant from the Queens Council on the Arts in 2019. In 2022, she was awarded a 4heads PORTAL residency on Governors Island, NY. In 2023, MacDonald made the alternate list for an EFA studio residency and was featured in an exclusive article on her work and practice by contemporary art blog, Art Spiel. MacDonald is currently based in Long Island City, NY.
A novice curator, MacDonald’s most recent presentation was for Citizens for the Arts project, ART PAWN: New and Used Art. In 2021, MacDonald co-curated with independent gallerist Francesca Arcilesi from AHA Fine Art to present an open call group show titled “Cat Daddy”.
Co-curated by Peter Gynd and Jody MacDonald, Everywhere All Over presents a line of questioning: what occurs during the perception of a particular subject, character, object, or scene when it has been reproduced over and over again by an artist?
The curators Jody MacDonald and Peter Gynd—who also serve as the artists—have each selected a body of work by the other that relates to SPRING/BREAK 2016’s theme of ⌘COPY⌘PASTE. Erring on the side of a visual overload, the installation of Everywhere All Over focuses on presenting multiples of two specific subjects: Jody MacDonald’s bats and Peter Gynd’s trees. While it may seem like an unlikely pairing, the two aesthetic obsessions present a fairy tale-like mismatch of a figurative sculptor curating a forest of multiples from a landscape painter, and a landscape painter curating a colony of figures from a sculptor.
The title is an adaptation of MacDonald’s ongoing project titled Everywhere All Over. All Over. Everywhere. Spanning several years of experimentation and production, MacDonald’s series—inspired by the ecological demise of myotis lucifugus (little brown bat)—was brought to fruition during a residency on Governors Island in 2022. The little brown bat, which suffers from White Nose Syndrome—a fungus that activates bats’ metabolism and wakes them outside of their feeding cycle—is in declining populations across North America due to its impacted sleep.
MacDonald’s persistent musings on what darkly comic and mundane activities the bats might engage in once they awoke drove her to the creation of roughly 400 ten-inch-tall photo-transferred and sewn bat/human hybrid sculptures. Her signature style of small-scale textile works presents a twist on the genre of figurative sculpture and delivers poignant critiques on current social situations. Grouped into multiple tableaux and employing satire as their weapon of choice, the figures lampoon contemporary issues including our abuse of the environment, the decline of women’s and civil rights, our narcissistic obsession with technology, and the escalation of a divided country. While the sheer number of figures draws audiences closer, it’s the deep dive into the miniature details that are the reward. A selection of 380 of these textile bat/human sculptures were chosen by Gynd for the ⌘COPY⌘PASTE theme.
Presenting alongside and amongst these mischievously perched sculptures, MacDonald has selected 40 mostly 10x8-inch plein air oil paintings by Peter Gynd. These intimately painted scenes focus on Gynd’s obsession with the depiction of landscape.
Gynd, a fifth generation classically trained painter, has a history of returning to a specific location to paint multiple versions of the same subject. With a focus on capturing the gesture of nature, Gynd’s recent body of paintings pulls influence from the forests surrounding the rural region of qathet, British Columbia, Canada, mixed with elements of compositions found in the constructed landscapes of urban parks. Traditionally associated as places where the magical and divine dwell, Gynd’s forests are lushly coloured landscapes of quick brushwork and bold strokes. Evidence perhaps of an artist's fury in seeking to capture something which is under constant climate-driven threats.
Landscape has historically been a genre used to depict power and ownership. Examples such as Thomas Gainsborough’s 1750 portrait of Mr and Mrs Andrews show a couple almost pushed to the side of the picture frame to highlight the land they reign over behind them; or paintings by the Group of Seven which were funded by Canadian corporations to advertise westward expansion and settlement. With the mounting climate crisis, landscape painting takes on a new political role in inspiring education and hope, through instigating a connection with the natural world around us.
For this installation RM 1144 has been transformed into a grayscale painted version of New York City, featuring iconic places that no longer exist such as CBGB’s, the Orpheum Theatre, and Ralph’s. Installed in-and-amongst these are MacDonald's perched bats and Gynd’s abstracted landscapes.
The contrast of Gynd’s vibrant landscapes against MacDonald’s densely populated monochromatic cityscape only accentuates the obsessive nature of each artist-curator’s practice of creating and tenaciously pursuing their subject matter.
The goal of this WILD CARD duo’s presentation of Everywhere All Over is to guide the audience on an immersive journey, encouraging them to take Gynd’s “long look” and MacDonald’s “deep dive” into subjects all around us that are constantly under threat.
Bio’s
Peter Gynd is a fifth-generation artist and an independent curator. He grew up amongst the coastal rainforests of western Canada and is known for his paintings that pull influence from his experiences in nature. Peter studied old masters oil painting and classical sculpture at the Vancouver Academy of Art and as an apprentice to his mother, painter Ursula Medley, before pursuing a BFA in Glassblowing from the Alberta College of Art and Design (2006) and an MFA in Painting and Drawing from Brooklyn College in New York City (2022).
At the insistence of his psychic, Peter Gynd relocated to New York City in 2011, set up a studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and began curating for arts organizations. Gynd has since curated extensively at galleries, art fairs, private residences, and institutions. From 2016-20, Gynd was the director at Lesley Heller Gallery, producing exhibitions by world renowned artists and up-and-coming stars. He has been a guest critic at The Art Students League, Residencies Unlimited, Kunstraum, ChaNorth Artist Residency; a consultant with the New York Foundation for the Arts; guest lecture at Pratt Institute and Long Island University Post; and guest juror for numerous exhibitions.
Peter’s work is held in private collections around the world and he has taught painting in Canada, Mexico, the United States and Italy. In 2022 Peter Gynd was a Graduate Teaching Fellow at the CUNY's Brooklyn College and is currently based between Houston, Texas and qathet, British Columbia, Canada.
Jody MacDonald is a mixed-media artist whose practice is a merging of fact, fiction, and contemporary culture. Her intimately scaled works are characterized by dark humor, multiples, and an obsessive attention to detail.
MacDonald is a graduate of the Emily Carr University of Art + Design, located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Her fastidiously crafted work has been exhibited in galleries and artist-run centers across Canada and the US, with solo shows at Radiator Gallery, NY; Galerie Connexion, Fredericton, NB; Acadia University Gallery, Wolfville, NS; Latitude 53 Contemporary Visual Culture, Edmonton, AB; Campbell River Art Gallery, Campbell River, BC; and Fifth Parallel Gallery, Regina, SK. Her mixed media drawings, paintings and sculptures are held in numerous private collections, both nationally and internationally.
MacDonald was a recipient of a New Work Grant from the Queens Council on the Arts in 2019. In 2022, she was awarded a 4heads PORTAL residency on Governors Island, NY. In 2023, MacDonald made the alternate list for an EFA studio residency and was featured in an exclusive article on her work and practice by contemporary art blog, Art Spiel. MacDonald is currently based in Long Island City, NY.
A novice curator, MacDonald’s most recent presentation was for Citizens for the Arts project, ART PAWN: New and Used Art. In 2021, MacDonald co-curated with independent gallerist Francesca Arcilesi from AHA Fine Art to present an open call group show titled “Cat Daddy”.
