GRAHAM GILLMORE at Monte Clark Gallery (55 Mill, building 2), to January 6. 416-703-1700. Rating: NNNN
Things are mixed up and hard to read in Graham Gillmore’s most recent paintings. Given the combination of glazed surfaces and raw, off-kilter statements ground into them, there’s no telling where artifice lets off and emotion takes over. Of course, that’s the key to their appeal.
Gillmore has made large text-based paintings his means of investigating certain phrases and fragments that have affected him personally: they are visual meditations on emotional puzzlement and pain.
That his statements are literally carved into the lapidary layers of pigment on his paintings says a lot. Carving suggests raw feeling and the desire to memorialize that we associate with the scarred surfaces of school desks, trees and the walls of institutions. This technique carries with it a sense of wounded and frustrated emotion that flat painted text would not convey.
Yet Gillmore’s ever so slightly askew generic statements and conversational fragments carry the traces of day-to-day conversations and our media-saturated frame of reference. Often they’re partially misspelled or crowded into a corner of the canvas. If anything, Gillmore embraces the awkwardness of real communication.
Phrases like “Good question, but I’m sorry we’re out of time” could be the polite rebuff of a politician at a press conference, with its subtext of evasion and dishonesty. The large off-white “Thanks for Nothing… ness,” on the other hand, is the punchline of a metaphysical joke gone sour, while “Wash away your tears” could be a promise of redemption or the bland refrain of a top-40 love song.
These phrases are offset by often luscious and playful colours and surface textures. Irresistibly bright, they add another layer of discontinuity to the loaded statements carved into them.
art@nowtoronto.com
