Sky Glabush: The Mountain Pass

Philip Martin Gallery is proud to present, "The Mountain Pass," an exhibition of new paintings on paper by Sky Glabush. "The Mountain Pass” is a follow up to "Mount Temptation," which examined the role and the development of motifs in Sky Glabush's work-on-paper practice. 

For almost four decades, Sky Glabush has explored art-making as a route for external observation and personal self-discovery. Glabush makes paintings and works-on-paper that offer viewers an opportunity to examine interiority through an encounter with exteriority as figured in the language of painting. In looking at Glabush's painted objects, in considering their very materiality, we witness light, color, composition and texture - an experience that in some sense mirrors Glabush's own. 

Speaking about his work, Sky Glabush notes, "There is no recipe, there is no formula, there is no direction. I never know if and when a painting is going to feel real, or if it is going to feel like it is alive...The materials themselves have to guide the painting. The materials have to present an image or an idea that did not come from me."

Glabush’s open attitude finds realization in three major paintings on paper included in "The Mountain Pass" - a dense copse of trees, a view over a mountain valley, stars over pines at night. The spaces in these works stretch before us. Sky Glabush balances dense layers of information against a feeling of immediate presence. 

What is space in picture? In ourselves? Glabush puts this question forward constantly by way of an investigation of motif and pictorial space as place in which to locate being. "Space equals consciousness," Alan Watts says, going on to point out the complexities of figuring artistic expression in words and pictures. "While we shape clay into a pot, it is the emptiness inside that holds we want; we hammer wood for a house, but it is the inner space that makes it livable; we work with being, but non-being is what we use," Lao Tze writes.  

Sky Glabush offers a description of how he approaches painting and the studio: "The last four or five years I have become more entranced with dealing with the landscape as a kind of platform for experimentation and abstraction...What I'm trying to do when I am [in nature] is kind of absorb a feeling...And I am always trying to push the paintings to a place where I lose the connection to my own source material or my own experience. I get lost in the process and then when I find it again - when it kind of comes to life again - then it comes to life for the viewer, too.” 

Glabush's large-scale paintings immerse the viewer in a nearly one-to-one transcendent experience; his works-on-paper evoke an intimate, considered process of deep concentration and reflection. Drawn from experiences hiking in the mountains of Switzerland, the woods of Ontario, the fields of Majorca, the pieces in "The Mountain Pass" map the internal and the exterior world, and engage us in a feeling of life realized.

Sky Glabush (b. 1970 Alert Bay, BC) received his BFA from the University of Saskatchewan (Saskatoon, SK) and his MA from the University of Alberta (Edmonton, AB). Sky Glabush's work will be the subject of a solo exhibition at Philip Martin Gallery in September 2025. Glabush's work was recently the subject of the solo exhibition, "The letters of this alphabet were trees," at Stephen Friedman Gallery (New York, NY; London, UK). Glabush’s paintings are in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada and other major museums. Glabush’s group shows include, “The Moth & The Thunderclap," Modern Art (London, UK, 2023); “BodyLand,” Galerie Max Hetzler (Berlin, Germany, 2022); "Unnatural Nature: Post-Pop Landscapes,” Acquavella (New York, NY, 2022); and "Sky Glabush and Johannes Nagel," Cordonhaus Städtische Galerie Museum (Cham, Germany). Glabush's work has been included in exhibitions at University of Western Ontario (London, ON); Galerie de l’UQAM (Montréal, QC); and Rideau Hall (Ottawa, ON). His work is included in such collections as Harvard Museums (Cambridge, MA), National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, ON); Alberta Foundation for the Arts (Calgary, AB); Bank of Montreal (Toronto, ON); Burnaby Art Gallery (Burnaby, BC); Colart Collection (Montreal, QC); Ivey Collection (Toronto and London, ON); MacKenzie Art Gallery (Regina, SK); McIntosh Gallery, (London, ON); McMichael Canadian Art Collection (Vaughan, Ontario); Mendel Art Gallery (Saskatoon, SK); Museum London (London, ON); University of Saskatchewan (Saskatoon, SK). His work has been featured in publications such as Tate Magazine, Border Crossings, Canadian Art, Toronto Star, and Globe and Mail. Glabush lives and works in London, ON.

“Sky Glabush: The Mountain Pass” is online October 30 - November 13, 2024. The works are available for in-person viewing at the gallery. 

Philip Martin Gallery is open Wednesday-Saturday 11-5 and Tuesdays by appointment. The gallery is located at 3342 Verdugo Road, Los Angeles CA 90065. For additional images and information please call 323-507-2037 or email info@ philipmartingallery.com.