8 October 2008
"Crawford Bridge", © David Holden 2006
An interesting marriage of the surreal with the ultra-real, which I think rather heightened the experience of both shows. I'd seen David Holden's last show at the [sas], and I must admit it threw me into actual raptures. I'm not quite sure what it was about the little cameos of urban wastelands in Ontario painted on little tea plates that got me into a tizzy, but I just loved it. All of it.
For this show, Holden really did something new with his style - the rundown parking lots and playgrounds and warehouses are still there, but the colours are amped up and the surreality has
crept in. I'm not sure he quite knows where he's taking this yet - the images were gorgeous, and
tickled me in the same way his older work did, but the new elements seem a bit uncomfortable... like the surrealist paintings they made my class do in the 6th grade - they looked weird, but was that enough? At any rate, the paintings are lovely and I can't wait to see what he does next.
Gratton's contributions fit perfectly into the smaller "espace 2", which is much more suited to this sort of concept art than it is to the miniaturized museum-displays they sometimes try to cram in there. Now, I call this ultra-realism because I don't actually know what the right term is, but I figure it's photos of a photobooth, and then taking adorable black and white photos of yourself in the photobooth from the photos... that's pretty real, right?
Also, they let us use a hammer.
To 22 November.
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