Ilse Gradwohl
Marea
8 July to 14 August 2010
Opening Thursday 8 July from 6 to 9
Diaz Contemporary is pleased to present Ilse Gradwohl’s first solo show with the gallery. Based in Mexico City, Gradwohl is known for personal and intimate works that demonstrate an understanding of painting as a two-fold process made up of the artist’s expression and the spectator’s elaboration.
Gradwohl is skilled at allowing colour and form to become a method of transference and communication between herself and the viewer. Her complex, mood-filled canvases prompt imaginative projections on the part of her audience, with spaces of light and colour that conjure images of other realities and provoke affective responses. In much of her work, her initial focus on the materiality of the canvas develops into a visual meditation on aspects of the natural world. According to Luis Carlos Emerich, “everything…in her work appears as knowledge derived from contemplation…a type of knowledge impossible to communicate by any means other than the pictorial, for it is derived from intense experiences that can only be apprehended when projected into the two dimensions of the canvas.”
In this particular series of five large-scale paintings, Gradwhol allows expressive colour and uninhibited brushstrokes to accumulate into a moving, tumbling Marea (Spanish for “tide”). The kinetic images have physical depth and emotional power, and are both forceful and contemplative.
Ilse Gradwohl was born in Austria and educated in Visual Art at the University of Mexico. Recent solo shows include Travesias and Shifting Landscapes at the Drexel Galeria, Garza Garcia in Monterrey, Mexico. She has also been included in numerous solo and group shows at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City, and the Museo De Arte Contemporaneo, in Merida, Yucatan.
Flavio Trevisan
Studies of a New Past
8 July to 14 August 2010
Opening Thursday 8 July from 6 to 9
Diaz Contemporary is pleased to present new work by Flavio Trevisan. In this show, Trevisan demonstrates his ongoing engagement with maps as a visual code and sculptural medium. His understanding of space and structure, arising as a result of his complex relationship with architectural practice, causes him to see the process of translating maps into sculpture as a way to appreciate the internal logic and progressive accumulation of our urban and suburban environment. The isolation of streets, the main tool with which we navigate and conceive of our environment, enables new patterns and narratives to become visible.
This ongoing series of mapping exercises is a vehicle for the exploration into the limits of two-dimensional sculpture. Unlike conventional maps, which are drawn onto flat surfaces, these objects are sculpted as part of the datum, incorporating the page into the work. The structure of the city and the structure of the page itself become synonymous with the map or landscape being conveyed. Whether built up or stripped away, the final map has emerged from a process that conveys the meaning that would otherwise be represented by the symbols in a cartographer’s toolkit.
The maps here encompass fragments of Toronto. Seeing the patterns of streets any Torontonian could start to recognize the intricate systems that are part of everyday life. Even with no titles, names or locations, these maps can be deciphered, intersections recalled, and experiences remembered. They are not just descriptions of our environment, but storehouses for unlocking the memory of place.
Flavio Trevisan is based in Toronto and was educated at the University of Toronto School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. Prior to pursuing an art career he worked on numerous buildings in Toronto, including the Harbourfront Fire Station and the Schulich School of Business at York University. Recent solo shows include Grey Area, Convenience Gallery, Toronto; Accumulations, Art Mûr, Montréal; and Folded Landscapes-Unfolding Maps with Gwen MacGregor, Akau Gallery, Toronto.
For more information, please contact:
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