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Michael Antkowiak (Warsaw, 1977) is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design, and completed his MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2003. He has since exhibited in public and commercial galleries in Canada and abroad, including the Queens Museum of Art, in New York City, and Carrie Secrist Gallery, in Chicago, Il. Michael is a recipient of several artist’s grants and residencies, including the Toronto Arts Council Grant, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship. Michael lives and works in Toronto, and in addition to his studio practice, teaches as a drawing and painting instructor at OCAD University.

 

Patrick Staheli is a graduate of the BFA program at OCADU. Paintings grow out of different starting 

points, simple compositional sketches, 

improvised opening moves, or Photoshop 

remixes of earlier works. In this way, my 

studio practice becomes a sort of 

self-perpetuating system like a feedback 

loop, or an algorithm with a limited set of 

components: tools, marks, colour,but where 

adjusting one variable can lead to a myriad of new outcomes.

These paintings are an unsettled, 

contradictory reaction to our constantly shifting visual culture.