Elspeth Pratt
Outside in
26 March to 23 April
Opening Saturday 26 March from 3 to 6
Artist in attendance

In Outside in Elspeth Pratt’s sculptures are situated between questioning and possibility.  There is an insistent interrogation of the relation between how we construct our everyday space through our perceptual and conceptual faculties, what could be termed its production, and how that same space is defined for us through our ongoing activities, what can be thought of as lived space.  This line of questioning is always being considered in relation to the radically different process that Pratt sees in the conceptualization of abstract space, a place where possibility is inherent.  It is in this place of tension, between definition and possibility, that she locates her work.

The work emanates from an in-between place, a place of complex questions with tenuous answers, a place of vulnerability, a place of dependency.  From here the works cannot exist outside of their contextual relationship to the gallery, nor can they escape the gallery’s physical construction, its walls, floor, and load-bearing elements. However, Pratt’s oblique surfaces and tilting planes, sculptures that privilege dexterity and resourcefulness over immutability, do not propose an opposition.  They are objects that are dependent but which contain within them the power to counteract the primacy of the architecture they are encased in. The work signifies a kind of resistance through their form, an exploration of ambiguity that questions the literal and figurative structural logic that informs our construction of space and point to an inherent lack of stability within that system.

Within the abstraction of her work she wants the viewer to experience the unknown, to experience the sense of knowing without the idea of certainty, to be able to recognize the forms that are being referenced without being able to name them.

Elspeth Pratt is based in Vancouver and has exhibited nationally and internationally.  She has had numerous solo exhibitions, most recently Nonetheless at Charles H. Scott Gallery in Vancouver and the Cooley Gallery in Portland Oregon, and Bluff at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver.  She has exhibited in group exhibitions in Canada, Japan, Australia, Taiwan, and Italy and is currently part of the traveling exhibition Silent As Glue, organized by Oakville Galleries.

Joel Herman
Citizen
26 March to 23 April
Opening Saturday 26 March from 3 to 6
Artist in attendance

Diaz Contemporary is pleased to present Joel Herman’s second solo show with the gallery.  In this show, the artist presents a new body of drawings, which are minimal compositions of horizontal and vertical lines.  Fields of grey from afar, upon closer inspection they reveal the intricacy and complexity of the artist’s mark making.

Herman’s past work has used appropriative methods and modernist forms to explore the mutability of a material or historical structure.  These new works, while still incorporating the language of reductive abstraction, concentrate more on the relationship between sensibility and form, and the implications of an individual inhabiting an imposed order.  By focusing on a simple action, Herman addresses questions of persistence and the grain of the voice.

Joel Herman attended the University of Victoria, where he received his BFA in 2004, and the University of Guelph, where he completed his MFA in 2008. His work has been included in exhibitions at Artspeak (Vancouver), Gallery 44 (Toronto), Open Space (Victoria), and The Ministry of Casual Living (Victoria), among other venues. He lives and works in Toronto.


Installation view, More Often than Always/Less Often than Never at the Richmond Art Gallery, Richmond BC, 2010

Special Presentation: Gordon Lebredt
As a tribute to Gordon Lebredt, the gallery is also pleased to present ...in the pink... This piece will be installed in the office for the rest of the season.  It consists of a wall painting and a photographic element and is, in effect, an excerpt from Lebredt’s recent installation at the Richmond Art Gallery in Richmond, BC.  This “original” was part of a group show for which the curators asked artists to explore ideas of imagination, irrationality and impossibility in the artistic world. ...in the pink... aligns Lebredt's conception of painting with the application of "cosmetics".  In other words painting is an act of "covering up" a surface, but a surface that is already marked or inscribed. Here at the gallery, the walls of the office serve as brackets, both an architectural structure and a linguistic one, enclosing this detail of the complete work.

For more information please contact:

Colleen O'Reilly
colleen@diazcontemporary.ca

Diaz Contemporary
100 Niagara Street (at Tecumseth)
Toronto, ON  M5V 1C5
416.361.2972
www.diazcontemporary.ca

Gallery Hours: Tuesday to Saturday 11 to 6, or by appointment