Niall McClelland’s new show “Hot Sauce” opened last night at the Clint Roenisch Gallery. The usual crowd of Toronto’s most stylish, artsy, quirky and endearing were in attendance taking in the art and warming up by the new, quintessentially Canadian fire pit situated out front of the space on St. Helens Ave. Niall’s work was beat up and free in essence. Here’s a note from Niall himself on his style taken from his recent interview with Mark Hall-Patch for 01Magazine:

A lot of artists envy the freedom that you put into theses works, some of them being dragged over land and destroyed but almost in a loving way.

Ha, I look at it more like punishment than freedom! Yeah I mean I don’t throw things around that easily either. A while back I came across Wabi Sabi, you know that Japanese idea of embracing transience and imperfection? Just the idea of the age and the experience and the life that these objects have is valuable. The more life they have the more important and valuable they are. If they have been dented up and nicked and paint is chipped, that’s desirable in Wabi Sabi. I saw that and I thought it was so lined up with how I see things, it totally distilled these vagues thoughts I had about what I was making. It’s something that has been done for centuries and it’s how I think about things too. I like everything around me to be worn, including art . I like it when a drawing has been beat up and kicked around. I like the holes in the corners after they have been displayed multiple times, the stained areas where something has been water damaged, I think that’s interesting. – Niall McClelland