Daniel Hutchinson
Angell Gallery Catalogue, 2011 - 2012
By Benjamin Klein
A graduate of NSCAD’s prestigious MFA program and alumni of the RBC’s annual national painting competition, Daniel Hutchinson’s works display the qualities of fluency and seamlessness in several ways. First of all, their meticulousness of execution and sombre tonalities are virtuosic and congruous to the highest degree, maintaining strict discipline of strategy, tools, and execution. But more challengingly and importantly, Hutchinson’s works defy the minimalist conventions they invoke not only in departing from abstraction per se and employing images; but in daring to invoke the concept of theatricality, by actually depicting the theatre in its various historical manifestations. Perspective and recessive space are forced into these monochromes through effort of will and imaginative work. This is accomplished through a range of carefully planned and deployed techniques, ending in the wonderful integration of emphasis on flatness and integrity of the picture plane with a sophisticated pictogram-like imagery. The seams between painterly sections, just like the theoretical ones between ideas, are integrated with great confidence, as though they had always easily done so, when the reverse is true.
The Toronto born and based Hutchinson engages a conversation with the tropes of performance and the theatre, and analogizes the act of painting to that of a watched performance given in time. By doing so he declares the translation of all forms throughout their different possible dimensions to be a matter for our exploration, edification and the furtherance of our knowledge of civilization; and therefore ultimately, of ourselves. By displaying the scenes and scenery, the props and attention to lighting of the professional theatrical world’s traditions, Hutchinson has drawn out and illuminated an important scene of instruction, much like a poet or dramatist, by rhetorical demonstration and metaphor. He focuses our attention on his theme and allows it to become both the subject of art in a generalized sense, and the delivery vehicle of his own.
Another important similarity between performance and its symbolic embodiment within Hutchinson’s work is the way the movement of the eye, its tonal register, and the real optical play of light and dark are brought together, not synchronically but over time as we watch. As we move back and forth in front of the paintings, our apprehension of their appearance shifts and alters just as do our understandings of story and events during a play, these works viscerally claim. In responding to it, we enhance our understanding of the interaction of all the arts, and the larger impact they have on our lives; that such a young artist is able to produce such a mature and thoughtful effect on his audience is strong proof in favour of his future success.
A graduate of NSCAD’s prestigious MFA program and alumni of the RBC’s annual national painting competition, Daniel Hutchinson’s works display the qualities of fluency and seamlessness in several ways. First of all, their meticulousness of execution and sombre tonalities are virtuosic and congruous to the highest degree, maintaining strict discipline of strategy, tools, and execution. But more challengingly and importantly, Hutchinson’s works defy the minimalist conventions they invoke not only in departing from abstraction per se and employing images; but in daring to invoke the concept of theatricality, by actually depicting the theatre in its various historical manifestations. Perspective and recessive space are forced into these monochromes through effort of will and imaginative work. This is accomplished through a range of carefully planned and deployed techniques, ending in the wonderful integration of emphasis on flatness and integrity of the picture plane with a sophisticated pictogram-like imagery. The seams between painterly sections, just like the theoretical ones between ideas, are integrated with great confidence, as though they had always easily done so, when the reverse is true.
The Toronto born and based Hutchinson engages a conversation with the tropes of performance and the theatre, and analogizes the act of painting to that of a watched performance given in time. By doing so he declares the translation of all forms throughout their different possible dimensions to be a matter for our exploration, edification and the furtherance of our knowledge of civilization; and therefore ultimately, of ourselves. By displaying the scenes and scenery, the props and attention to lighting of the professional theatrical world’s traditions, Hutchinson has drawn out and illuminated an important scene of instruction, much like a poet or dramatist, by rhetorical demonstration and metaphor. He focuses our attention on his theme and allows it to become both the subject of art in a generalized sense, and the delivery vehicle of his own.
Another important similarity between performance and its symbolic embodiment within Hutchinson’s work is the way the movement of the eye, its tonal register, and the real optical play of light and dark are brought together, not synchronically but over time as we watch. As we move back and forth in front of the paintings, our apprehension of their appearance shifts and alters just as do our understandings of story and events during a play, these works viscerally claim. In responding to it, we enhance our understanding of the interaction of all the arts, and the larger impact they have on our lives; that such a young artist is able to produce such a mature and thoughtful effect on his audience is strong proof in favour of his future success.