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Features / August 4, 2016

Leslie Gales and David Moos’s Top Pick at Canadian Art’s Gala Auction

Leslie Gales, president of the Midland Group of Companies, and David Moos, curator, have their eye on a painting by Marvin Luvualu Antonio. Here’s why.
Marvin Luvualu Antonio’s <em>Engineer</em> (2016) is one of the many great works up for grabs at the Canadian Art Gala on September 22 in Toronto.
Courtesy Clint Roenisch Gallery. Marvin Luvualu Antonio’s Engineer (2016) is one of the many great works up for grabs at the Canadian Art Gala on September 22 in Toronto. Courtesy Clint Roenisch Gallery.

The Canadian Art Foundation’s annual auction takes place during our 21st annual gala on September 22. In anticipation, we asked members of our art-advisory committee to select their favourite works on the auction block. We’ll be publishing their selections periodically leading up to our auction preview on September 15, when all of the works will be on view at Waddingtons.

Leslie Gales and David Moos’s Top Pick:
Marvin Luvualu Antonio, Engineer, 2016
Courtesy the artist and Clint Roenisch Gallery

Reading from left to right, one sees syntax, the roots of a language being traced and explored. With spray cans and spills of paint—echoing the style of the street—Marvin Luvualu Antonio presents deftly drawn cyphers, sequenced gestures. The canvas exists between a text and a territory, calligraphy and cartography—tracing a language, while also ascribing, portioning, sectioning zones.

What is the space of Antonio’s painting? Perhaps the distance traced by his own journey from Africa, through Europe, to Canada, crossing cultures and gathering insight that is learned yet already deeply known, both utterly familiar and arrestingly new, a sensation conveyed by the dazzling white glyph that suggests the outline of a figure. It is unclear whether “engineer” in the title is a noun or verb, a person or a command.

Visit canadianart.ca/gala2016 for information on gala tickets, and a select auction catalogue.