Toronto Life

Advertisement

In the Galleries

The Bone Collector

James Lahey engages viewers in a game of cranium By David Balzer


It’s fitting, perhaps, that James Lahey’s latest exhibit features a skull as the lone, prominent motif: the Toronto-based painter has built his career out of turning to styles and subject matter that many in the art world consider long dead. Lahey’s new project revisits a series he began over 10 years ago, when he was given access to a human bone collection at the University of Toronto’s faculty of medicine. These early works placed finely rendered, austere views of bones next to plain fields of colour, or still lifes of flowers or clouds. Lahey’s recent paintings do the same, but in a much darker, blunter way. Skulls hover in the foreground, either against a black background or accompanied by a veiny network of tree branches in silhouette against a gloomy grey. Part of the great memento mori tradition, the works also recall Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Ambassadors—which contains one of Western art’s most famous skulls, obscured anamorphically between its two subjects. There is, however, no obscuring here: just Lahey’s mortal message, at once time-worn and immediate.


Not For Finding. Artwork $10,000–$26,000. Oct. 4 to 27. Nicholas Metivier Gallery, 451 King St. W., 416-205-9000, www.metiviergallery.com.

Comments

Comment on this story

Neither David Balzer nor Toronto Life necessarily agree with the comments posted here. Editors will not correct spelling or grammar. Toronto Life reserves the right to edit or delete comments entirely. Read our full policy

Some articles on this site require that you have a Torontolife.com account in order to comment, and this is one of them. If you do not have an account, you can register now.

Username:
Password: (Forgotten your password?)

Comment:

Follow Toronto Life on Twitter, Facebook and via RSS

Advertisement

Advertisement

Advertisement

Contests
Most shared stories today

Advertisement