When the Lighthouse is Dark between Flashes
Angell Gallery, Toronto
August 22 to September 27, 2014
“Actuality is when the lighthouse is dark between flashes: it is the instant between the ticks of the watch: it is a void interval slipping forever through time: the rupture between past and future: the gap at the poles of the revolving magnetic field, infinitesimally small but ultimately real. It is the interchronic pause when nothing is happening. It is the void between events.”
George Kubler, The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things, 1962
In WHEN THE LIGHTHOUSE IS DARK BETWEEN FLASHES, Hutchinson references both the macrocosm and the microcosm. Titles point to broad analogies with astronomy, cosmology and particle physics, but also refer to the works’ immediate physical environment and the very materials of their essence.
The series Paintings for Sterling Board feature brushstrokes that respond to supports built from sterling board, a compressed-wood product that Hutchinson honours by replicating its textured, irregular surface in dark, glistening oil paint. In Painting for Sterling Board and Nonagon Shape (dark energy expansion) the radiating polygonal shape of the frame provides a visual analogy to the dark matter energy propelling the rapid expansion of the universe.
Works in the series Paintings for Picture Frames respond to their surroundings, quite literally, as interlacing curved or geometric brush strokes complement and contrast with the frames that contain them. Titles such as Painting for a Picture Frame (as a molecular cloud), and the illusion of depth created by contrasting areas of flat black and shimmering highlights, point to the external world. Yet these paintings’ non-objective nature pulls us firmly back to the realm of the abstraction and the artwork as thing in itself.
In Paintings for Electric Light, a series begun in 2013, brushstrokes are applied in response to fluorescent light fixtures arranged in various configurations. As reflected light shifts across the painting’s surface in accordance with the viewer’s movements, the sense of dynamism is palpable. Likening this relationship to the workings of a lighthouse (inspired by an analogy found in George Kubler’s The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things), Hutchinson states:
“Impossible to view fully from any one vantage point, the movement of the body of the viewer reveals the carefully coordinated formal relationships of colour, texture and surface, acting out the metaphor of the lighthouse; navigation, discovery, adventure and so on. Like the stars in the night sky, which pierce the blackness of the void with points of pulsing, coloured light, the lighthouse guides wayward travellers home.”
A selection of works from the exhibition:
George Kubler, The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things, 1962
In WHEN THE LIGHTHOUSE IS DARK BETWEEN FLASHES, Hutchinson references both the macrocosm and the microcosm. Titles point to broad analogies with astronomy, cosmology and particle physics, but also refer to the works’ immediate physical environment and the very materials of their essence.
The series Paintings for Sterling Board feature brushstrokes that respond to supports built from sterling board, a compressed-wood product that Hutchinson honours by replicating its textured, irregular surface in dark, glistening oil paint. In Painting for Sterling Board and Nonagon Shape (dark energy expansion) the radiating polygonal shape of the frame provides a visual analogy to the dark matter energy propelling the rapid expansion of the universe.
Works in the series Paintings for Picture Frames respond to their surroundings, quite literally, as interlacing curved or geometric brush strokes complement and contrast with the frames that contain them. Titles such as Painting for a Picture Frame (as a molecular cloud), and the illusion of depth created by contrasting areas of flat black and shimmering highlights, point to the external world. Yet these paintings’ non-objective nature pulls us firmly back to the realm of the abstraction and the artwork as thing in itself.
In Paintings for Electric Light, a series begun in 2013, brushstrokes are applied in response to fluorescent light fixtures arranged in various configurations. As reflected light shifts across the painting’s surface in accordance with the viewer’s movements, the sense of dynamism is palpable. Likening this relationship to the workings of a lighthouse (inspired by an analogy found in George Kubler’s The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things), Hutchinson states:
“Impossible to view fully from any one vantage point, the movement of the body of the viewer reveals the carefully coordinated formal relationships of colour, texture and surface, acting out the metaphor of the lighthouse; navigation, discovery, adventure and so on. Like the stars in the night sky, which pierce the blackness of the void with points of pulsing, coloured light, the lighthouse guides wayward travellers home.”
A selection of works from the exhibition:
