shary boyle at YYZ Artists’ Outlet (401 Richmond West) to February 9. 416-598-4546. Rating: NN Rating: NN
local artist shary boyle’s showof small ink drawings, oil paintings and silhouettes at artist-run centre YYZ cries out for some serious editorial snipping. It feels like she’s thrown together everything she’s done over the past year in a last-minute dash to fill the wall space. There are clumsy ink-and-wash drawings that could be the makings of a comic book, small monochromatic oil paintings, finely executed line drawings on transparencies, provocative paper cut-outs and one miniature and very cute Fimo baby.
Best by far are the nicely painted little grey-and-black oils on square panels: a baby with an exquisite belly button, a feathery owl tethered to a post, a pregnant woman in fishnet stockings and a girl wearing a paper-bag mask. But they’re all but lost on a wall dominated by floating grey faces.
Created during a year spent in Berlin and described in the artist’s statement as the faces of those who have already seen too much, their pained expressions could as easily have been inspired by the Berlin winter.
Boyle’s lesbian subtext — or are her variously joined female shapes Siamese twins? — is confused by her Freudian imagery of women in pointy witch hats sprouting unicorn horns or leafy branches snaking out from between women’s legs.
Like Boyle’s ghost faces, I’ve already seen too much.
