Anthony Cudahy, Justin de Verteuil, Magalie Guérin & Alexandre Pépin
Esker Foundation, Calgary, AB - To April 26
If you’ve ever walked through an art gallery and felt like you’ve barely scratched the surface, you’re not alone. But what if truly enjoying and understanding art requires slowing down? Slow looking, a practice rooted in mindfulness, is at the core of four solo painting exhibitions at Esker Foundation. Works by Justin de Verteuil, Alexandre Pépin, Anthony Cudahy and Magalie Guérin create sensual environments through four distinct painting practices. Blurring the boundary between figuration and abstraction, they transform everyday moments into fleeting yet tangible expressions, offering a human centred counterpoint to our fast-moving, hyper-digital environment.
De Verteuil opens a window onto other realms. In Planet Caravan, a body hovers before a tree silhouetted against a fiery sky. A taut hammock transforms into wing-like shapes as the twisting figure appears caught between falling and flight. Inside his luminous paintings, images remain unfixed. Figures float within ambiguous rooms, thresholds or open landscapes, where meaning quietly emerges through colour, gesture and spatial disturbances.
Pépin’s paintings unfold slowly through geometry and fluid line, revealing moments of joy, ambiguity and quiet tension. Figures entwining in tall grass, lovers merging in a chair and solitary bodies occupying ornate landscapes evoke intimacy. In Singing Birds, Moving Mountains, Pépin exquisitely renders luxurious fabrics into intricate and softly painted panels, illuminated by golden highlights.
Cudahy’s paintings punctuate the gallery with warm fuchsias, cool yellows and bright greens. The artist poetically renders tender scenes of rest, embrace and desire interwoven with symbols and archival fragments. In Double Readers (mooncycle), two figures seem to merge while small crescent moons flicker above like quiet beacons in the night.
Guérin draws viewers into her bold yet intimate abstractions. Working on textured surfaces marked by shallow ridges, she combines vivid oranges, chartreuse greens and geometric forms edged with black and white. Shapes slip between abstraction and recognition—perhaps a vase, perhaps a tree—creating compositions that pulse with their own style and rhythm.
In a culture obsessed with speed and efficiency, slow looking is a quiet revolution. Together, these exhibitions invite viewers to linger and revel in joyful looking.
