Gabriel Parniak is a multidisciplinary artist and designer living and working in Toronto. His work spans print, collage, multiples, sculpture, and installation. Parniak collects, alters, and manipulates found printed matter and objects in order to explore the emotive effects of context, material, ritual, and design within news media, art, and consumer culture. Much of Parniak's work centres on the act of obscuring and altering the iconic as a visual mode of critiquing and questioning the assumed authority, truths, and value(s) normally ascribed to his subjects, be they objects or images, individuals, or groups of cultural and sociopolitical influence.
Taking conceptual cues from Dada and Pop Art, as well as borrowing elements of Minimalism and commercial design, Parniak creates spaces and images with a visual and emotional legibility which invites multiple readings. By infusing a specific brand of visual humour and exposing layers of conceptual connection between subjects, Parniak's work balances between serious social critique and absurdist satire. By co-opting and subverting the context of his source materials, and applying a highly distilled aesthetic sensibility, Parniak produces projects to evoke conversation and contemplation on human interaction and representation in the 21st century.
Gabriel Parniak earned his BFA at NSCAD University in 2013. His work has been shown nationally and abroad and has been collected privately and publicly in Canada. He has participated in The Roundtable Residency (Toronto, ON.), and the Boarding House Arts Incubator Residency (Guelph, ON.)