C103 Review

Toronto: Aluminium at Susan Hobbs Gallery

 

Shirley Wiitasalo: Island, 2002; photo Isaac Applebaum; courtesy Susan Hobbs Gallery

Toronto is not a sophisticated city, but it is the wealthiest city in Canada, and it is the centre of the Canadian art market. There are many galleries across its 632 square kilometres, and something worthwhile is always on view somewhere.

An interesting cluster of galleries is south and/or west of the intersection of Queen and Bathurst Streets. A short stroll takes a person to Art Metropole, the Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation, Susan Hobbs Gallery, Stephen Bulger Gallery and Monte Clark Gallery. All merit visits on one's rounds, yet Susan Hobbs Gallery deserves special attention because it is one of Toronto's extraordinary private galleries, and it is the gallery in Toronto that regularly achieves the most. It, along with Christopher Cutts Gallery, is one of the few galleries in Toronto that shows historically significant Canadian artists and has artists who are subjects of monographic museum exhibitions in Canada and abroad.

The current exhibition, Aluminum (5 December 2002 - 25 January 2003) coincides with the tenth anniversary of the opening of the gallery. As aluminium is the traditional gift for tenth anniversaries, so the tenth anniversary show is called Aluminum. To honour the title, the show has paintings, sculptures and photo-based work that employ or refer to aluminium.

Shirley Wiitasalo (b. 1949) is one of Canada's finest living painters. Throughout her career, Wiitasalo has always been a painter, and although her work is easy to align with con temporary currents in painting elsewhere, it has never been derivative of those currents. Wiitasalo's contribution to Aluminum (Island, 2002) fits into the exhibition by virtue of a stroke of aluminium pigment no larger than a thumbnail sitting atop what appears to be a lamppost. The patch connotes the brilliance of electric illumination without denoting anything in particular: this is the genius of her work. In addition, the beacon illuminates the nocturne, elucidating passages of crimson-rose and violet underpainting without illuminating any one thing in the scene.

 

Left : Andrew Reyes: Day Place / Spray Palace #1; Middle: Day Place / Spray Palace #2; Right:Day Place / Spray Palace #7; all images are colour digital prints, 11" x 17", edition of 5; courtesy Susan Hobbs Gallery

In the same exhibition, Andrew Reyes (b. 1964), one of the younger artists with whom Susan Hobbs has been working, has three colour inkjet prints from the series Day Place/Spray Palace (2002). Reyes' images are not conventionally attractive, but his thorough consideration of the images pushes them into a special realm. Where Wiitasalo's paintings connote without denoting, Reyes' images connote little, while denoting a location, perhaps a day job of industrial painting. The particularity of Mr Reyes' images is not found in Wiitasalo's paintings, and we accept that the images are of somebody's if not his day place or spray palace. The locations are imbued with charm and poetry accented by Mr Reyes' addition of flares to the highlights in his images. Reyes' flares illuminate spaces that are resolutely humble and personal, and that also become sites for reverie.. Although something good can be found at any time in Toronto, the above artists and gallery are worth writing abroad about.

Greg Humeniuk is an independent scholar who is interested in modernity and the art economy.

Aluminum, Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto, December 2002/January 2003