Have you seen this man?
Have you seen this man? Does he look like someone — or perhaps no one — in particular?
For those who came to the Art Gallery of Windsor during the brief time that we were open in 2020, you likely caught a glimpse of Mixed Doubles: The Evan Penny Gift. The exhibition featured works by acclaimed artist Evan Penny, and was curated by Nancy Tousley. Now, one work from this exhibition — No One-In Particular #3, Series 1 — has resurfaced both on the third floor of the Gallery and out in the city! As part of our Look Again: Outside initiative, locals can see life-sized reproductions of nine artworks from the AGW’s Collection installed throughout downtown Windsor. For those who are travelling to the Windsor Transit Terminal, keep an eye out for the reproduction of Evan Penny’s No One -In Particular #3, Series 1.
Read on for an excerpt from curator Nancy Tousley’s essay about Mixed Doubles: The Evan Penny Gift to learn more about Evan Penny and his work!
Doubling, often encountered as a likeness or a multiplication times two, has been a driving force in Evan Penny’s art for some 40 years, both as an idea and as physical fact. Doubling is inherent in the style of his art. The Toronto-based artist is well known in Canada and abroad as a hyperrealist sculptor and artist-photographer, and realism is a style widely understood as having a direct connection to the visible material world. For every realist sculpture there is an implied model just as there is for every realist photograph. Penny works from a model in both mediums, whether it is a living person in relation to sculpture ,or one of his own sculptures in relation to photography. There are other kinds of doubling in Penny’s art as well, all of which reveal him to be a conceptualist. Doubling is a source of his work’s impact and its meaning.
The choice of doubling as the theme of the exhibition, Mixed Doubles: The Evan Penny Gift, arose from thinking about a subject that would include all of the works — two sculptures and nine photographs — that comprise Penny’s significant 2015 donation to the Art Gallery of Windsor. The gift represents three major series of works — the Shadow Series, The Libby Project and the No One — In Particular Series #1 and #2 — from an important period from 1985 to 2006. It was during this time that Penny initiated a discourse within his work on the representation of the body and began to make photographs of his sculptures as independent works of art. In addition to the 11 works in the gift, the exhibition included No One — In Particular #3 (Series 1), made in 2001 and purchased by the gallery that year, and the photograph of No One — In Particular #1 (Series 1), loaned to the exhibition by Calgary artist Chris Cran. The opportunity to consider Penny’s sculptures and photographs together leads to a greater understanding of his undertaking as a whole.
