THE ARTFUL PRESENT Holiday Group Show at Veronique Wantz Gallery is on view beginning November 22nd and runs every THURSDAY + FRIDAY 11:30am-3pm and SATURDAY 12-4pm through DEC. 20th. Private appointments can be scheduled by emailing: gallery@veroniquewantz.com

The gallery is bursting with stunning, affordable art and unique one-of-a-kind original work in various price points and media, including oil, acrylic, paper, wood fired ceramic, mixed media, photography, sculpture and textile.

Minnesota-based artist Wendy Westlake’s new body of work investigates the layered and complex visual language between artist and nature. Throughout her career, Westlake has returned to the natural world as inspiration, and over a decade ago, it served as a catalyst for her venture into vibrant, large-scale botanical abstractions.

In her current show, Westlake’s paintings are often inspired by the changing seasons, especially the long-awaited transition from winter’s lingering chill to spring’s renewal and vitality of spring. Instead of portraying the cold, merciless grip of winter in her paintings, Westlake offers viewers a vivid promise of spring’s return, as her abstract forms and palettes conjure warmth, growth and renewal. Organic imagery in many of her works suggest blossoming trees and branches, sprouting plants, lush vegetation, dense foliage, and vibrant flowers in bloom.

 This thematic focus on aspiration and transformation ultimately informed the title of the exhibition, RENEWED. Westlake writes: Daylight hours dwindle, and the air grows colder, signaling that winter is just around the corner. I often find these gray frozen months challenging. Lake swims, bike rides and walks through lush green forests feel like an impossibility. Having seen the cycle repeat itself over and over again, I wait, trusting that the rest and dormancy of this season are a necessary mystery. What appears lifeless will be renewed. 

We are excited to host local artist Steve Ozone’s first solo show with the gallery - on view from Saturday, Feb. 1 - March 22, 2025. Steve Ozone creates enigmatic still lifes of vegetables, flora, and fauna. Using  photography as his medium, he captures the essence of his subjects in ways that reveal  their hidden beauty and mystery. By photographing against a black background and  framing in two-inch-deep shadow boxes, Ozone creates a sense of depth and  dimensionality that draws the viewer in. His subjects are an exploration of his Japanese  and Chinese ancestry, reflecting the cultural traditions and symbolism that have shaped  his identity. Through his work, Ozone invites us to see the world in new and unexpected  ways, to appreciate the beauty and complexity of nature, and to contemplate our place  in the natural world.

Best Road Trip Ever! celebrates the friendship of two local Minneapolis artists, JIM HILLEGASS and SUSAN WAGNER, who approach their respective disciplines differently, yet share a focus on landscape as a continuous inspiration. Wagner decodes the title of the exhibition: “The very nature of a road trip invites the possibility of serendipity, change, or seeing something new—with or without a destination in mind. Considering this idea, the concept of a road trip can take on a wider meaning to include almost anything. It can mean the best trip ever into your own internal emotional, and intuitive landscape.” Together, as seen in their new bodies of work created specifically for this exhibition, the artists display their mutual love of landscape, abstraction and color exploration.

Veronique Wantz Gallery, located in the North Loop of Minneapolis, is pleased to announce its "Spring + Summer Group Show 2024" on view from April 26th through August 24th, 2024. The group show includes various local, regional, national and international artists. Media includes oil, paper, wood sculpture, ceramics, photography, mixed media and textile. 

An opening reception for our Spring + Summer Group Show 2024 will be on Saturday, May 11th from 5-8pm, and will coincide with the North Loop Art Walk the same night. Please join us - our openings are free and open to the public.

Work by the following artists will be shown: Andrew Nordin, Annie Hejny, Brooke Lanier, Cait Courneya, C. Anthony Huber, Christopher Harrison, Cynthia Holien, Dodie Logue, Dom Venzant, Eleanor McGough, Emma Le Konrad, Jim Hillegass, Jenny Keyser, Kar-Keat Chong, Katherine Story-Sutter, Kei Gratton, Kenneth Herren, Merick Reed, Michael Hermansen, Mickey Smith, Mike Murray, Nathanael Flink, Owen Brown, R. J. Kern, Samuel Johnson, Sandra Felemovicius, Steve Ozone, Susan Wagner, Valerie Grondin and Wendy Westlake. 

A reception for the "Spring + Summer Group Show" is on Saturday, May 11th from 5-8pm, and will coincide with the North Loop Artist Walk occurring the same night. 

Painting by Brooke Lanier, “Gate (Pink),” oil on panel, 16” x 16”

We are pleased to announce Veronique Wantz Gallery’s first ever photography exhibition, featuring a solo show of local artist R. J. Kern’s stunning photographs. The show presents highlights in a mini-retrospective format with projects by Kern including: Divine Animals: The Bovidae; The Unchosen Ones; The Best of the Best; and Kern’s newest series, The Last Fair. Monographs featuring this work will also be available and include The Sheep and the Goats (Kehrer Verlag, 2018) and The Unchosen Ones: Portraits of an American Pastoral (MW Editions, 2021).

Kern’s portraits focus on intimate, interdependent relationships of people, animals, and landscape as a means of exploring how ancestry shapes identity and how myth intertwines with personal history. Tintypes, salt prints and archival pigment prints draw sharper connections between traditional and modern farming routines, as Kern adopts both historical and current photographic processes.  

Opening January 27, 2024 from 5-8pm. Free and open to the public.

Veronique Wantz Gallery is pleased to announce its first solo exhibition of work by local artist, Nathanael Flink. “Falling Into Place” features a group of new mixed media and textile works. Of this new body of work, Flink remarks that he “employs strategies of formal assemblage to evoke associations of mood and light.”