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Geoff McFetridge Grasslands July 16 - September 5, 2026 Opening reception: Thursday, July 16, 6-8pm COOPER COLE is pleased to present Grasslands, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Geoff McFetridge. This new body of work extends McFetridge’s ongoing investigation into perception, memory, and the spaces between observation and imagination. Figures, animals, architecture, and landscape elements occupy scenes that feel at once recognizable and elusive, suspended between lived experience and dream. The paintings evoke a cinematic stillness reminiscent of Alex Colville’s psychologically charged scenes, yet they turn westward into a distinctly unreal landscape where narrative remains suspended and unresolved. While rooted in observations of the everyday, the works in Grasslands carry traces of the vast horizons and spatial sensibilities of the Canadian prairies where McFetridge was raised. Familiar motifs appear transformed, existing somewhere between recollection and invention, certainty and dream. Materially, the exhibition marks a subtle shift in the artist’s approach. Layers of oil paint are applied over graphic acrylic foundations, creating surfaces that feel atmospheric and luminous. Rich colours emerge through veils of softened paint, producing an effect that is both saturated and sun-bleached. Contrast is deliberately reduced, flattening distinctions between foreground and background, and dispersing attention across the entire composition. Rather than directing the viewer toward a central protagonist, the paintings invite a slower form of looking in at which figures and environments exist in quiet relation to one another. Geoff McFetridge (b. 1971, Calgary, Alberta, Canada) is interested in how images exist in between or outside of language, and in turn how this encourages more open-minded approaches to cognition. In his paintings, images become language; in the artist’s words, “it should feel like something, rather than look like something.” In the pictorial spaces he creates, definitions are less finite and can slip between interpretations. As indicated by their titles, many of his paintings whimsically play with the bodily experience of design, using simplified figures to both think about forms and collective experiences. McFetridge received his BFA from the Alberta College of Art and Design and his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. McFetridge was part of the infamous Beautiful Losers exhibition which debuted in downtown New York in 1991 and went on to tour the world. He has continued to exhibit in international galleries including Cooper Cole, Toronto; Contemporary Calgary, Calgary; Half Gallery, New York; V1 Gallery, Copenhagen; Gallery Target, PlayMountain, Tokyo; and Heath Gallery, Los Angeles. McFetridge has also been included in museum exhibitions at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver; the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Yale University Art Museum, New Haven; Museum of African American Art (MAAA), and The Geffen Contemporary at MoCA; Los Angeles. McFetridge currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California, USA. Image: Geoff McFetridge, Untitled, 2026, pencil on paper, 8.5 x 11 inches (21.59 x 27.94 cm) Geoff McFetridge Grasslands July 16 - September 5, 2026 |
Cooper Cole1134 + 1136 Dupont St Toronto, Ontario M6H 2A2 Canada
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