| These paintings reference modern architecture of the mid-twentieth century to which I have a personal connection, having grown up in and around them. The buildings that interest me the most are those which strike me as particularly unsuccessful from a social and formal stand point. During this period of architecture, the language of modernism became dysfunctional. For instance, the use of modernist forms in a city park fountain in Toronto of the late sixties was flawed in its evocation of somber and hopeless rather than uplifting feelings, and therefore was acting inversely to the original intent. It is these buildings and monuments that becomes the starting point for the paintings. The paintings are thus a place where I can reinterpret these structures in image and color.
The final purpose of the paintings is not, however, to make an architectural portrait. I look at the buildings as one side of the final product, the other side being the notion of abstraction itself, directly built out of the forms of the architecture. The abstraction to me is an image that can be recognized as a real space with depth and form and at the same time contradict this real space, by not making sense as a picture with recognizable signs. In this way the works can portray an either/or for the viewer, in that they may or may not be recognized as real space and form. Many of these works can, through this split visual information become interesting or conflicting for the viewer. |
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