Tiko Kerr
Affinities

Recognized for his vibrant paintings of Vancouver's iconic architecture and natural locales, Tiko Kerr made a radical shift in his practice in 2014 when he began to utilize collage in the production of mixed media works. These in turn have fundamentally refocused his approach to painting, producing complex and vibrant images, referencing both contemporary digital media and key modern artists and art movements. Central to all his new paintings is the notion of images and concepts coming together in a collage-like fashion and the way in which forms find affinities with and impact each other, creating new arrangements which can reinforce or diverge from their significance to the original source material.

In choosing his source material, he is drawn to using artists’ works that in their original form make a specific impression or are artistically significant. He then adapts and reframes these into a contemporary social and historical context. This is demonstrated by works in the exhibition; The Meaning of Night utilizes the early cubist experiments of Picasso and Braque; Night Moves reflects the lyrical approach of Howard Hodgkin and Matisse; The Gift of the Given is Kerr’s homage to Canadian Art, using fragments of Colville, Shadbolt, Binning, Harris, Jackson, Carr, and classic CPR posters to construct the work. This work exists in it’s ultimate form as a large-scale wall mural in Khatsahlano, undertaken in collaboration with Jay Senetchko and completed in July 2018.

Image: Night Moves, 2018