Sandra Meigs: Eccentric Consistencies
Sandra Meigs Hey Yo 2009 / photo Toni Hafkenscheid
For more than 25 years, Sandra Meigs has won accolades for her unusual—and often quite canny—artmaking practice. Meigs’ 2009 exhibition at the Carleton University Art Gallery in Ottawa, titled “Strange Loop,” was an exemplar of that tradition, offering large, grey-hued canvases in which both urban architectures and mystical faces seemed at once hidden and exposed. While the palette and scale of the “Strange Loop” works contrasted with her previous, more primary-coloured Bump and Ride series, the thread of optical play and figurative ambiguity in Meigs’ art has remained relatively constant. This special, Meigs-ian type of eccentric consistency—varying appearances, though not their essential devices and themes—would seem to continue in the artist’s newest work, now on view at Susan Hobbs Gallery in Toronto. In this artwork, The Fold Heads, eight portrait-size paintings are accompanied by a projected text, while erstwhile appendages of fabric scraps promise to enhance both the tendency to abstraction and to clownish caricature. As always, a Meigs show merits serious consideration, even as it alludes to flights of formalist fancy. (137 Tecumseth St, Toronto ON)
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Sandra Meigs The Fold Heads 2009 Installation view / photo Toni Hafkenscheid |
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Sandra Meigs Luv Ya So 2009 / photo Toni Hafkenscheid |
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