Elizabeth McIntosh at Blanket Gallery:

pyramidal enigma

Elizabeth McIntosh’s latest paintings are large crystalline candy. Playfully coloured, these deliberately clumsy geometric compositions illuminate outward from the gallery wall. However the imposing scale of mostly 75” by 90”, takes on the smothering seriousness known to mid-20^th century abstraction. She wants the viewers to be transformed. Like a contemporary Rothko, her paintings are vessels of self-realization without the baggage of lofty semi-religious experience and universal primitive emotion. These new painting’s physical presence, vibrancy, and non-illusionary flatness would certainly hold up such transcendental potentiality.

McIntosh’s current exhibition at Blanket Gallery in Vancouver is only her second solo show and includes six oil paintings and one framed collage. The impressive paintings fill up the modest space. The installation made categorical sense with the three large 75” x 90” paintings on west wall, three smaller 30” x 40” paintings on east wall, and the single framed collage on the south wall.

Untitled (multi-coloured vertical stripes) (2007) brings to mind non-figurative Orphism of Sonia Delaunay. But instead of concentric circles, these large colorful structures are nearly entirely built up with triangles. There is a push-pull of positive and negative shape, as viewing breath in and out between triangles of rich colour and washed charcoal black. This is the kind of viewer experience that non-representational painting has to offer. Instead of being relaxed and satisfied by what the painting is of, the mind is at state of activity trying to make sense of these new and fascinating objects.

These works are designed like a do-it-yourself Hard-Edge Abstraction painting. It’s easy to feel how process oriented her practice is. Untitled (silver with geodesic shapes over colour) (2008) and Untitled (negative black triangles on silver ground) (2008) show repetition of triangles over on metallic silver paint. There is an obsessive one after the other placement but controlled with a knowledgeable restraint for the composition. The other two 30” by 40” works named Untitled are painted with saturated, bright and even neon colour applied much thicker than the rest of those exhibited. These works take on the appearance of unfolded origami. But even under the gaze of the most analytical eye, the structures always unravel back to its original position for new and infinite combinations.

The bright and sunny piece called Untitled (yellow) (2007) shows off the painterly brushstroke common throughout. Even though these are on canvas, the slightly transparent and directional paint application gives the impression of wood grain. This tactility becomes one of the ways McIntosh naturalizes a mode of painting that is usually static, solid, and industrial.

The scale, repetition, paint application, and edible coloration make for very welcoming artwork. Once ushered in, the viewer’s mind can grabble and work over Rubik’s cubes of triangles. This could be how McIntosh expects the audience to find transformative experience. This abstraction goes further than the empty promises of the stark flatness in Modernist abstraction. She starts here and moves on to build diamonds of unsolved puzzles begging for the viewer’s brain-play and participatory photism. It’s an open-ended art does not dictate meaning to us. McIntosh applies the kind of inventiveness and dedication that gives abstraction a valid place in the future of painting.

Taralee Guild