DANIEL HUTCHINSON
  • Exhibitions / Projects
    • Florilegium
    • Tin Vision
    • Bright Black
    • Delta Flowers
    • Staging Abstraction
    • Mirror, Mirror
    • When the Lighthouse is Dark between Flashes
    • Paintings For Electric Light
    • Almanac
    • No Object
    • Half-light over the Baltic Sea
    • Bon Echo
    • Zero Dimensions
  • About
  • Reviews
    • Visual Arts News, Ray Cronin
    • Artoronto, David Saric
    • Toronto Star, Murray Whyte
    • Border Crossings, Ben Portis
    • YYZ Artists Outlet, Patricia Ritacca
    • Artoronto, Shellie Zhang
    • Akimbo, March 13th 2012
    • Viewers Like You, February 25th 2012
    • The Huffington Post, February 23rd 2012
    • Toronto Life, February 23rd 2012
    • The Globe and Mail, December 30th 2011
    • Modern Toronto, August 16th 2011
    • The National Post, April 22nd 2011
    • Mass Art Guide, November 1st 2009
    • Montreal Mirror, October 15th 2009
    • Flight + Hotel, October 30th 2009
  • Essays
    • The Painter's Painter by Meraj Dhir
    • A Field Without Origin / Notes on Paintings for Electric Light by Craig Rodmore
    • Navigation. Blackness. by Sara Hartland-Rowe
    • Daniel Hutchinson. by Ben Klein
    • Zero Dimensions par: Lotfi Gouigah (français)
  • Contact
  • Writing
Picture
Alfred Pellan (Canadian 1906-1988)
Fond Marin    1962
oil on canvas
12 3/8 x 17 7/8 in.


Staging Abstraction
The Art Gallery of Hamilton
Co-curated by Melissa Bennett and Daniel Hutchinson
April 23, 2016 to March 19, 2017 

Staging Abstraction features quintessential examples of Canadian abstract painting from the 1960s to the 1980s. Many of the works were brought into the collection in their time as the artists were emerging, and through subsequent donations as the Gallery became recognized as a key institutional collector of late modern and postmodern Canadian abstraction. The Gallery now holds nearly six hundred abstract paintings from this period, comprising over a quarter of the museum’s contemporary holdings--yet very few of the works on view here have been exhibited in the last twenty-five years.

Abstract painting faced a crisis beginning in the late 1960s, as new categories of art such as video, installation and performance challenged the compelling narrative of modernist painting, which prioritized pure painting as its own subject. Just a short decade later the art market surged around neo-expressionism, but abstraction as a whole faced renewed criticism. Artists began to adapt the medium, responding with hybridized paintings, often containing several styles and media within a single work. Conceptual and reflexive approaches flourished, and artists often considered social and political content through abstraction.
​
Over twenty works were selected for this exhibition, to illuminate these radical decades, extending the term “abstraction” to accommodate the divergent practices that have helped set the stage for the complex, pluralistic practices of contemporary art today. Featuring works by Gershon Iskowitz, Joseph Drapell, Barbara Astman, Jack Bush, Yves Gaucher, K.M. Graham, Joyce Wieland, Tim Zuck and more. 

Click here to read Staging Abstraction, an essay by Daniel Hutchinson
© 2006 - 2020 Daniel Hutchinson. All rights reserved.
  • Exhibitions / Projects
    • Florilegium
    • Tin Vision
    • Bright Black
    • Delta Flowers
    • Staging Abstraction
    • Mirror, Mirror
    • When the Lighthouse is Dark between Flashes
    • Paintings For Electric Light
    • Almanac
    • No Object
    • Half-light over the Baltic Sea
    • Bon Echo
    • Zero Dimensions
  • About
  • Reviews
    • Visual Arts News, Ray Cronin
    • Artoronto, David Saric
    • Toronto Star, Murray Whyte
    • Border Crossings, Ben Portis
    • YYZ Artists Outlet, Patricia Ritacca
    • Artoronto, Shellie Zhang
    • Akimbo, March 13th 2012
    • Viewers Like You, February 25th 2012
    • The Huffington Post, February 23rd 2012
    • Toronto Life, February 23rd 2012
    • The Globe and Mail, December 30th 2011
    • Modern Toronto, August 16th 2011
    • The National Post, April 22nd 2011
    • Mass Art Guide, November 1st 2009
    • Montreal Mirror, October 15th 2009
    • Flight + Hotel, October 30th 2009
  • Essays
    • The Painter's Painter by Meraj Dhir
    • A Field Without Origin / Notes on Paintings for Electric Light by Craig Rodmore
    • Navigation. Blackness. by Sara Hartland-Rowe
    • Daniel Hutchinson. by Ben Klein
    • Zero Dimensions par: Lotfi Gouigah (français)
  • Contact
  • Writing