Surreal Deal MEDRIE MacPHEE on view at Pari Nadimi (80 Spadina) until April 28. 416-591-6464. Rating: NNN
new york city-based canadian painter Medrie MacPhee has come out as a serious surrealist.
There’s a huge dose of Dali in the stylized forms that drip across the colour-saturated backgrounds of her latest solo show at Pari Nadimi. It’s particularly clear in works like Shore Leave and Chance Encounter, which feature solid, Pacific-salmon-red planes populated by anthropomorphic figures that are firmly rooted in the artificial space defined by mathematical perspective, but without the benefit of any reference points in the background.
This isn’t really surprising. Her industrial landscapes from the late 80s owe a lot to the surrealist spaces of Giorgio de Chirico. But her subsequent explorations of human interactions with technology dropped the idiom.
MacPhee’s burning-hot colours are very 21st-century, as is her homage to mid-20th-century aesthetic anarchy.
