Dana Slijboom Canada, b. 1984

Dana Slijboom is a Toronto-based painter working in oil on canvas. Her practice engages both digital and traditional techniques to explore the contradictions of contemporary image making toward a renegotiation of how we process visual information. Through their playful oversimplification, archetypal figures and landscapes act as proxies for the excessiveness of image culture—as familiar lures that obscure a more hollow or cynical narrative. Slijboom applies a medley of motifs such as line and repetition, colour blocking, and relief to achieve a level of graphic spatial distortion that compels the viewer into engagement, inviting them to confront, excavate, and interrogate the overly palatable imagery. Crude and meticulous, Slijboom’s paintings offer a lighthearted proposal of control over the cohabitating states of anxiety and humour alive in every symbol.

Recent exhibitions include, Tattarattat at Hunt Gallery, Toronto (2022), Not Your Garden at Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto (2022), BLOOM DOOM ROOM at The Plumb, Toronto (2021), Twenty-Four at Bricks Gallery, Copenhagen DK (2020). Her work is included in several catalogues including Caniche Vol. 4 published by Revista Caniche, Mexico City, Nut Volume 2, plublished by BookArt, Montreal and Confetti Generation published by Polly’s Picture Show, Amsterdam. She holds a BFA from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam NL (2009). Her work is included in the collections of TD Canada Trust, Scotiabank, the Royal Bank of Canada as well as several private collections.