elizabeth mcintosh at
Revolver (112 Scollard) to October 27.
416-963-3131. Rating: NNNN
don’t be fooled by revolver’sprime Yorkville location. The swirls of dried carpet glue that cover the tiny gallery’s concrete floors are far more relevant, in terms of positioning it within Toronto’s art landscape, than its Scollard address.
That will all be moot once it closes its doors, though, following the rock-solid selection of recent abstracts by Painting Disorders collective co-founder and regular Elizabeth McIntosh, in her first solo show (only her third ever) since earning an MFA from London’s Chelsea College of Art and Design.
The Toronto native’s giddy abstracts are familiar from her Painting Disorders outings, but where her early works invited — demanded — comparison to hellish wallpaper, McIntosh has slid into a sly understanding of what made an ace abstract expressionist like Jack Bush choose to paint with truly dreadful colours.
It’s all a matter of balance.
Her large canvases, busy with hard-edged multicoloured bull’s-eyes floating on backgrounds of loosely painted horizontal stripes, are knockouts, but the best of the Untitled works in this show is a deceptively quiet arrangement of kidney-bean shapes in some bad beiges and cool blues with hot hits of purple, yellow and green.
