Winter 2026 Exhibitions Launch at Esker Foundation
Four solo exhibitions by Anthony Cudahy, Justin de Verteuil, Magalie Guérin, and Alexandre Pépin; and Kristine Zingeler in the Project Space.
January 24 – April 26, 2026
Opening Reception: Friday, January 23, 6 – 9pm
Painters on Panel: Saturday, January 24, 1 – 2:30pm
The four artists come together to discuss their processes, references, and influences in this panel discussion of painters talking about painting.
Anthony Cudahy, Dusk and Dawn (with Perspective Machine), 2024. Courtesy the artist and Hales London and New York, GRIMM Gallery, Amsterdam, London, New York, and Semiose, Paris. Copyright the artist. Photo by: JSP Art Photography.
Anthony Cudahy: metronome yawned
Anthony Cudahy paints narratively elusive images of queer intimacy and tenderness within everyday life. His work interweaves myriad symbols and references ranging from queer archives, art history, mythology, print ephemera, even fragments from his own paintings. While these references coalesce with a logic personal and idiosyncratic to the artist, his open-ended narratives gesture to the gradual accumulation of meaning within the flotsam of our own lives.
metronome yawned brings together new and recent works that cumulatively meditate on the slipperiness of time—how it’s felt compared to how it’s ordered, how a life is measured relative to the milestones that are collectively yet spuriously held up as markers of progress, or how specific instances of mundanity can unexpectedly and irreversibly punctuate the cadence of a life.
Justin de Verteuil, Please, Please, 2022. Courtesy the artist and Sies + Höke, Düsseldorf. Photo by: Ivo Faber.
Justin de Verteuil: sie will / muse. zur marionette
Justin de Verteuil’s paintings appear as images in the midst of becoming: compositions that have been coaxed slowly into focus, as if tuned across radio frequencies until a signal emerges from the ether and begins to take shape. His works hover between legibility and uncertainty, where memories shimmer into and out of focus, and the feeling of a time and place emerges before the specifics of a narrative do. de Verteuil’s paintings generate meaning the way weather forms: gradually, atmospherically, out of shifting pressure systems of colour, gesture, and the fugitive traces of experience.
de Verteuil draws his subjects from lived moments with friends and loved ones, time spent in resonant places, and the immediacy and nuances of life around him. However, these sources are mutable starting points; he paints through them, over them, under them, letting compositions accrue and dissolve. What eventually surfaces is not an illustration of an event, but a state of perception suspended between remembering and imagining.
Magalie Guérin, Untitled, 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nicolas Robert, Montréal and Toronto.
Magalie Guérin: Orange to Rattle
Magalie Guérin’s paintings often begin with what remains: she carries forward yesterday’s pigment, a trace of past works and decisions, as a provocation to begin a new composition. From this material residue she builds paintings that are both generative and iterative—they are works that remember and reference themselves even as they continually evolve, build, and refuse to settle.
Guérin’s works explore how colour and shape behave as subjects in their own right; they enter the pictorial space like characters with distinct temperaments, personalities, and roles: a vibrant chartreuse pierces its crooked hook near centre; a golden yellow hums at the sharp edge of an undulating beige plane; a mottled brown or pool of dark teal brace at the edges of the canvas; an intense orange announces itself like a flare.
Alexandre Pépin, Vast World, Tight Knot, 2024. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by: Paul Litherland.
Alexandre Pépin: Lavender
Alexandre Pépin’s paintings locate fleeting instances of connection, desire, or joy within the everyday—two men entangled in tall grass, a single figure immersed in a verdant landscape, a pair of lovers reading side by side. His paintings are often catalyzed by a feeling of earnestness or sincerity.
Through the process of painting and his specific alchemy of material, colour, line, and texture, Pépin complicates this initial feeling, giving visual form to the ambiguity and complexity of intimate relationships that can often elude language.
Kristine Zingeler: In the Balance
Until March 15, 2026
In the Project Space
Kristine Zingeler’s artistic practice emerges from a process of slow and attentive looking, curiosity, and wonder. She is drawn to the beauty and resonance of nature’s detritus: rocks, seashells, feathers, tree bark, seed pods. Her studio is filled with an ever-expanding collection of objects and fragments, often gathered from her garden, or nearby walks with her family. She approaches these objects with the empathy and curiosity of a maker, parsing the complexities of their colour, form, and texture in a bid to understand their creation.
In the Balance, Zingeler’s site-specific installation, offers a series of ceramic vessels inspired by the overlooked beauty and labyrinthine complexity of wasp nests.
Esker Exhibition and Free Programs Brochure
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About Esker Foundation
Founded in May 2012, Esker Foundation owes its vision to its founders, Calgary-based collectors & philanthropists, Jim and Susan Hill, who wanted to create an accessible and welcoming space for people to experience contemporary art exhibitions and programming. An important part of this vision is to ensure that barriers to access are as low as possible. To that end, Esker is proud to offer free admission, programs.
Through exhibitions, public programs, publishing, and commissioning activities, the Foundation supports artists and audiences through a variety of learning, connecting, and collaborative models. The gallery reflects on current developments in local, regional, and international culture; creates opportunities for public dialogue; and supports the production of groundbreaking new work, ideas, and research.
Gallery Hours:
Wednesday to Friday: 11 – 6pm
Saturday & Sunday: 12 – 5pm
Accessibility:
The gallery is barrier-free.
Admission and Programs are free.
Press Contact:
Jill Henderson
Communications & Marketing Lead
jhenderson@eskerfoundation.com
Direct Tel: 403 930 2499
Press Kit:
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Esker Foundation
4th Floor, 1011 9th Aveune SE
Calgary, AB T2G 0H7, Canada
www.eskerfoundation.art
@eskerfoundation
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