Angela Grossmann: Unfolding
About the exhibition
Angela Grossmann paints from an interior record where memory, emotion, and line precede narrative. Situated within a lineage of artists who privilege gesture and interiority over representation, Grossmann nevertheless resists abstraction. The human figure continually reasserts itself—partial, unstable, and deeply present. Her work begins with a contour, a trace that feels discovered rather than constructed. The figures that emerge hover between presence and erasure, suspended in a space where identity is suggested but never fully secured. Grossmann’s figures are not portraits, but fragile, unresolved beings perpetually in the process of becoming or disappearing. What we encounter is not portraiture but presence itself: fragile, shifting, and incomplete. It is in this pendulous space between articulation and disappearance that her figures feel most alive. They’re unfolding.
Through layered brushwork and restless drawing, Grossmann builds surfaces that feel intuitive rather than illustrative. Lines wander, double back, and dissolve. Similarly, her paint is scraped away, thinned, and reworked, allowing earlier marks and photographs beneath to remain visible. Thus, her work floats in a delicate balance—always on the verge of forming or vanishing, drawing the viewer into a process of emotional excavation rather than narrative resolution.
Within all of this lies a remarkable precision. Grossmann’s ambiguity is never accidental; every softened edge, broken contour, and layered revision carries emotional weight. It is through drawing that vulnerability, longing, unease, and introspection are held in suspension. And it is within this suspension that memory is sedimented and identity remains continually in flux. The viewer is not invited to decode a narrative but to inhabit uncertainty rather than resolve.
This exhibition is generously supported by the Audain Foundation and Equinox Gallery.
About the artist
Canadian artist Angela Grossmann has been painting the human figure for over four decades, exploring its capacity to express the complexities of the human condition. Her paintings, photo-based collages, and mixed-media works draw largely on the female form and a vast archive of art-historical references, postcards, and found snapshots.
Grossmann lives and works in Vancouver and has been an active member of the city’s art community for decades. She earned her MFA from Concordia University and has taught at the University of British Columbia, the Ontario College of Art and Design, and Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Her work has been exhibited throughout Canada, the United States, and Europe, including at the Vancouver Art Gallery and in a retrospective at the McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton.