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Greetings!
Ingram Gallery is honoured to present BURL, an all-new collection by Luke Pestl. Join Pestl in celebration at the gallery for his opening reception Saturday, September 19, from 1pm to 3pm. Luke Pestl is a maker in the full sense. The beauty that holds him is irregular, weathered, and alive. Clay, fire, salvaged oak, and oil paint arrive together as one temperament.
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Potential - glazed stoneware, 23 x 19.5 x 19.5 inches
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LUKE PESTL
BURL
September 19 - October 8 . 2026
Artist's Opening Reception:
Saturday, September 19 // 1pm - 3pm
Pestl’s debut solo exhibition with Ingram Gallery features sculpture and painting in conversation. Surfaces flake, crack, gleam, and recede. They ask to be looked at and touched. Pestl’s practice sits comfortably in the gallery’s long conversation with Canadian artists that move between material invention and lived place.
| | Burl - glazed stoneware, 17 x 21.25 x 13 inches | | |
Luke Pestl knows the chemistry well enough to set the terms, and then he yields. His surfaces shed and still stand, his forms support themselves. Fragile and strong, like ourselves. He highlights the vulnerability inherent in the medium. The surprising potential of spontaneity is something that can only be achieved when we cede control and let the materials lead the way.
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Husk - glazed stoneware, 19.25 x 18 x 18 inches
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A burl is a growth chosen not for structural virtue but for the pattern locked inside. Cut, carved, polished, the imperfect interior becomes the point. Pestl’s vessels work the same way. The volume is declared first. Then the firing and the glaze open what throwing alone cannot show: impulse, fracture, and a bark that grows.
A burl is a tree thinking in a circle instead of a line.
| | Bambi - glazed stoneware, 22 x 15.5 x 14.5 inches | | |
The new oil paintings and three-dimensional forms that shape BURL are not separate works sharing a space. They are one outlook, split into elements. Through assured dimensional and material decisions, his works speak to unlimited potential, inviting the viewer to participate in the story.
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Rift - glazed stoneware, 17.5 x 18 x 18 inches
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Sonder - glazed stoneware, 15.25 x 17.25 x 10.5 inches
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60 Grit - oil on canvas, 42 x 42 inches
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“I like to admire burls. Not just in woodwork, but also the untouched growths. In a forest of an otherwise uniform species, they are unique, grotesque, and beautiful. A heart of gold.
In my work I strive to communicate tension and contrast. The pieces I am most proud of are the works that praise grime, graffiti, rot, and decay, all while emanating strength, delicacy, and confident beauty.
The wood used throughout this collection has been salvaged from the barrel program at Bellwoods Brewery, from used oak foeders from Tuscany.” —Luke Pestl
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Yard - oil on canvas, 60 x 60 inches
| | Cumulus 1 and Cumulus 2 - In Studio, Summer 2026 | | |
Pestl throws large, overriding strength and pragmatic function for visual potential. Scale is not spectacle, it is the condition under which clay stops being an object and becomes a body in the room.
The vessels occupy space the way a person does. They are assembled, vertical, and a little unfinished in the best sense. Humanity, a four-piece tower (below), carries the same instinct further. Pestl’s sculptures are presences. Full even when empty. Marked even when composed.
| Humanity - glazed stoneware, 75 x 18 x 18 inches - four (4) pieces | | |
Receive the BURL catalogue: ingramgallery@on.aibn.com
Luke Pestl was born in Toronto in 1981. His studio practice furthers the artist’s multi-talented reach, drawing from a history in biochemical engineering, graffiti art, and having co-founded Toronto’s beloved Bellwoods Brewery in 2012. Pestl divides time between studios in Toronto and the coast of Nova Scotia.
| Fawn - glazed stoneware, 10.75 x 10 x 10 inches | |
The vessels and stoneware sculptures of BURL are paired with luminous abstract oil paintings. The collection features works in a broad range of scale and colour. From the sophistication of dropped colour as in Fawn (above) to the subtle polychrome euphoria of Potential (top), Pestl confidently navigates visual vocabulary and tactile meaning.
| Can't Begin to Say - glazed stoneware, 50 x 26.25 x 26.25 inches - three (3) pieces | |
Inquiries, kindly email ingramgallery@on.aibn.com
We invite you to meet the work as it is meant to be met — in person, at true scale. Join Luke Pestl and community at the gallery on Saturday, September 19 between 1pm and 3pm. BURL continues at the gallery through to October 8.
Very best wishes,
Tarah & Jeff
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