In this clean, clear, striking work by Christopher Pratt, we are aware we are looking into a seascape, but little else is certain. Pratt’s expression of the remaining, striated floes of sea ice - summer holdovers from a bitter winter - under a uniformly hazy sky leaves the time of day unclear. The water extending to the lowest edge of the image also leaves our location as viewer tentative. Are we standing on dry land, on a dock, or even on a boat at sea? As in other similar examples such as Ice, Moon, and Tanker (sold by Heffel in May 2023), the title gives us some bearings by which to navigate the image and our experience of it: this is a real place, along the strait that separates Newfoundland from Labrador. Without so much as a cloud or a wave to ground the wide sky and sweeping horizon, however, our relationship here is left ambiguous. The result is a daringly minimal expression of the Canadian East Coast school of Magic Realism begun by Pratt’s one-time teacher at Mount Allison University, Alex Colville. Colville instilled a deep respect for technical rigour in his students, a lesson at which Pratt very much excelled. Here, he strips the image to only its most essential elements, providing an experience that is as unnervingly stark as it is existentially beautiful.