DOUBLE TAKE

JEN AITKEN X KAREN LOFGREN

OCT 5 - OCT 27, 2019

Royale Projects is pleased to announce Double Take: Jen Aitken x Karen Lofgren opening October 5th and running through October 27th.

Double Take explores the aesthetic and conceptual intersections within an a pair of artists from the gallery’s program. This series of exhibitions will continue to closely examine various dyads, comparing and contrasting practices through specific bodies of work.

Jen Aitken observes the built environment applying architectural shapes, textures, and colors to her own practice. Drawings on black gesso-coated vellum utilize intuitive, geometric mark making with white acrylic. The artist continuously re-works the original gestures by covering up lines in order to surface contours of forms that then influence her large-scale concrete sculptures.

Aitken received her MFA in 2014 from the University of Guelph in Ontario, and her BFA in 2010 from Emily Carr University in Vancouver. She was the 2017 recipient of the Hnatyshyn Foundation and TD Bank Emerging Visual Artist Award, and has received grants from the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include Georgia Scherman Projects, Toronto;Towards Gallery, Toronto; YYZ Artists’ Outlet, Toronto; Battat Contemporary, Montreal; and Centre Clark, Montreal.

Karen Lofgren plays with perception through unusual and diversified elements with a focus on process and material. Approaching the Limbless Gods began with research on interactions with ancient Roman cult statuary in which believers would ascribe a living and breathing condition to objects through daily dialogue and ritual action. Over time, through various causes, these god bodies began to deteriorate or were cast aside and left to rot. Demonstrating inverse gestures of these broken forms, Lofgren’s wood and resin sculptures trace women’s bodies and repeat actions thousands of times over to construct vessels that suggest absent worship.

Lofgren, a Fulbright Core Scholar at University of Arts London, Central St. Martins College in 2017/2018, has exhibited at venues including Palm Springs Art Museum; Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA; Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, CA; Pitzer Art Galleries, Claremont, CA; Royal College of Art, London, U.K.; Commonwealth & Council, Los Angeles, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Vancouver Biennale, Canada; and Ontario College of Art and Design, Canada. She has a permanent installation, also published as a book, titled "Trajectory Object c. 2000-2050”, produced with Andrea Zittel of High Desert Test Sites, located in Pioneertown, CA.Her projects have received support from the Mike Kelley Foundation; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; Canada Council for the Arts; West of Rome Public Art; The Ranch Projects; the U.S./U.K. Fulbright Commission; and the Pollock Krasner Foundation.