On Friday, November 18, Clint Roenisch celebrates the opening of a solo exhibition of new paintings by the Toronto artist Dorian FitzGerald (b. 1975). The exhibition brings together three large paintings of objects along with four small politically-charged landscapes. The title of the exhibition is in Old French and is taken from one of the exhibited works. The phrase, Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense, has been variously translated as "Shamed Be He Who Thinks Evil Of It" or "Evil Be To Him Who Evil Thinks". Together the works offer a nuanced meditation on power and privilege.

FitzGerald's paintings are constructed with acrylic paint and caulking in a slow, precise method that the artist has refined in his studio over several years. The process involves researching imagery, manipulating it with software, making a large-scale acetate transfer onto canvas and then using clear caulking to delineate areas of pure colour so that the image is built up slowly in a manner that resembles a kind of pointillism filtered into vector graphics. Both colour theory and the physical properties of paint, such as drying times and viscosity, are brought to bear in the setting of the final image.

The Ministry is pleased to announced the addition of a new event to our calendar for 2011. On February 24 from 7-9pm, members are invited to visit the studio of Dorian FitzGerald, an artist who has quite suddenly, it seems, become one of the most important painters in Toronto. Though he only recently began showing his work, his CV already boasts exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Art Toronto 2010, and Clint Roenisch Gallery. The important Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal recently acquired a massive work. His epically-scaled and labour-intensive paintings depict images of extravagance, opulence and excess.