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

Art that Avoids the Apocalypse
R.M. VaughanThe Globe and Mail, December 30, 2011


The world was supposed to end twice this year, and is scheduled to come to a crashing halt again in 2012, according to the Mayan calendar hysterics (and Euroskeptics).

Perilous times – and yet, I don’t see a lot of millennial or end-times anxiety in contemporary art (as I certainly did in the late 1990s). Artists are either too smart to buy into such perennial prophecies, or too self-absorbed. Likely both.

Thus, I predict 2012 will offer the visual-arts enthusiast experiences counter to the furies raging in the outside world – not pure escapism, but a different kind of questioning of norms and reality, one more considered, long-viewed and far more attractive.

Or, I could be wholly wrong, and artists will start smashing televisions, shredding plush toys and making blood paintings, again. Thank you, but no.

For the following upcoming exhibitions, I can at least promise that any or all of the above actions are highly unlikely. Not impossible, mind you….

[...]

Daniel Hutchinson at Angell Gallery

Feb. 23-March 24, 12 Ossington Ave., Toronto; angellgallery.com

Hutchinson’s penchant for dramatic multimedia works that explore the role of stages – humble shelf spaces to rotundas to platforms and theatres – and his crisp mixing of slate and fieldstone colours with occasional bouts of hot neon typically translates into a kind of oxymoronically serene spectacle. His new works promise to further these investigations, perhaps with a bit more colour (okay, that is me asking for a bit more colour). In 2011, Hutchinson was a semi-finalist for the RBC Canadian Painting Competition, and they don’t just hand those out to anybody.

© 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