About the Exhibition

“Within my work I employ clown-based imagery in order to create conversations around ideas of persona and social
masks. My work explores the self-regulating relationship between the unconscious mind and the social mask created by
it, the residue left behind, and the construction of the new mask. I adopt this clown imagery in order to symbolize these
social masks and communicate these theories within my practice. Through working with representations of clowns, I am
continually drawn to the use of deep, dark, black inks, and cream paper. The combination creates an aged aura for the
work, as well as pushes the visual contrast of the created imagery.”

About the Artist

Mitchell Luken was born and raised in the southern suburbs of Calgary Alberta, and recently completed his Bachelors of Fine Arts at the Alberta College of Art + Design. His main conceptual focus has be around personal identity and social masks within modern society. Primarily Mitchell works with copper etching process’ to obtain dark tonal variety with fine line work, while incorporating an unpleasant or crude aura surrounding it.