Jim Verburg

Jim Verburg is a Dutch / Canadian artist currently based in Toronto. With a practice stemming from film and photography, Verburg’s work is visually inspired by the nuanced, and fleeting affects of light. Employing materials such paint, ink, charcoal, and powdered graphite to interact with paper, newsprint, mylar, and fabric. Verburg creates captivating compositions that mimic the delicate nuances of reflection, absorption, opacity, and translucence.

Verburg expands the language of printmaking, using its tools in painterly and unconventional ways. Rollers, glass plates, balled fabrics, and even a rubber pool liner become instruments for quiet, layered compositions on mylar, tarlatan, paper, and newsprint. His latest print projects demonstrate his strong inclination for media experimentation. The diazotype and monoprint works produced on the occasion of his 2025 solo exhibition represent new media additions to his ever-evolving, multi-disciplinary practice. 

Notable projects include Within and Without, a two-part exhibition at Galerie Nicolas Robert (Montréal) and Zalucky Contemporary (Toronto, 2022); Shape and Light #1 for Toronto Dance Theatre (2016); The shape this takes to get to that, a public art commission for the City of Ottawa (2019); and One and Two at Galerie B-312 for Mois de la Photo Montréal (2011), which was a recipient of the Dazibao Prize.

He has participated in group exhibitions at The Power Plant (Toronto), Luciana Caravello (Rio de Janeiro), Access Gallery (Vancouver), Inman Gallery (Houston), Paul Kuhn Gallery (Calgary), and Cydonia Gallery (Dallas). Art fair presentations include Art Brussels (2024 and 2025), Expo Chicago (2018), Untitled Miami (2016, 2018), and featured solo projects at VOLTA NY (widmertheodoridis Zurich, 2015), and at the Texas Contemporary Art Fair (2015).

Verburg’s film For a Relationship won Best Canadian Short Film at Inside Out (2008) and was nominated for the Iris Prize (UK). His publications include O/ Divided/Defined (shortlisted for Best Printed Publication, Gala des Arts Visuels, 2014) and A New Relationship Between Reflective Sides (launched at MoMA PS1, 2015). He is the recipient of the Chalmers Arts Fellowship (2017), and his work appears in numerous private and corporate collections in Canada, the USA and Europe, including a recent commission for the Panoptès Collection in Brussels (2025).