Matt Shane
In Fitzca’s Pond

In his second solo exhibition at McBride Contemporain, Montréal-based artist Matt Shane plunged viewers into a vivid and disquieting world of amphibians suspended in dense and luminous waters. Known for his collaborative mural work with Jim Holyoak, Shane has more recently turned to introspective oil painting. His new series, In Fitzca’s Pond (2024–25), features seven canvases that delve into the fragile ecologies of wetland environments. In these works, he reflects on spaces that are simultaneously vibrant, vital, and increasingly at risk.

The paintings caught the eye with their surreal, almost psychedelic palette. Frogs and forest vegetation are rendered in neon pinks, electric blues, and acid purples — colours rarely found in nature. Shane juxtaposes these artificial hues with intricate, closely observed details, generating a subtle dissonance between realism and fantasy. The water, thick and glistening, often resembles oil slicks, its surface refracting light like gasoline. This visual effect becomes a metaphor for contamination, evoking the iridescent shimmer of pollution floating atop a pond. Rather than illustrating a particular environmental disaster, Shane’s paintings suggest a world in which toxicity has been absorbed into the very fabric of the landscape. The art historian T. J. Demos describes such visual strategies as part of an “aesthetics of climate emergency,” in which the aim is not to document catastrophe directly but to evoke its psychological and material presence in more layered, affective ways. He argues that the visual culture of environmental upheaval is inherently diverse and calls for methods that reach beyond institutional art, encompassing a wide range of creative practices.¹ 1 - T. J. Demos, “The Politics and Aesthetics of Climate Emergency,” in Art and Knowledge after 1900: Interactions between Modern Art and Thought, eds. James Fox and Vid Simoniti (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2023), 270. In Fitzca’s Pond captivated with its luminous surfaces, yet beneath this deceptively bright exterior, a darker and more unsettling atmosphere gradually emerged. Echoing Demos’s approach, Shane challenges dominant visual conventions and prompts us to reconsider our relationship with the world, ourselves, and the changing ecosystems around us.