The Path of Most Resistance: Tensile Strength
Elizabeth McIntosh (Blue and White - Paul Klee Cutout) 2009 Courtesy of Diaz Contemporary
Materials and techniques are the stated theme for “The Path of Most Resistance,” a summer group show at the OCAD Professional Gallery in Toronto. But the binding motif could also easily be artists who play intelligently on the boundaries between abstraction and figuration—or even the ones between painting and sculpture.
Vancouver’s Elizabeth McIntosh, best known as a painter, pairs one of her newer canvases with a special pinned-paper wall treatment—an installation element she experimented with at Goodwater gallery in June, and puts to good use here. British artist Alexis Harding takes sculpturally influenced painting in a different direction than Canadian stalwarts like Kim Dorland, creating glossy, puckered nanolandscapes of lacquer across variously shaped canvases. (One of Harding’s works is also in progress in the gallery, so that one can observe the way it shifts over time.)
American Daniel Raedeke, for his part, makes large, brightly coloured, design-evoking objects that curator Charles Reeve suggests be read primarily as paintings. And Torontonian Nestor Krüger continues to address the forms and foibles of architecture with a couple of unlabelled (and evolving) interventions that dissolve into the background—until, of course, you see them for yourself.
Overall, the result actually feels more easy than difficult: an intellectually grounded show that still leaves much for the eyeballs to enjoy. (100 McCaul St, Toronto ON)
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Daniel Raedeke FREESTAND 2003 A-Side: CLASSIC BUMP 2003 Courtesy of Bruno David Gallery |
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