TRANSlinear

October 26, 2001 to January 6, 2002

TRANSlinear is an exhibition of paintings by twelve Canadian artists, spanning an age difference of four decades, and at various stages in each artist’s career.  Included are Nicole Collins, Michael Davidson, Angela Leach, Howard Lonn, Euan Macdonald, Kazuo Nakamura, Taras Polataiko, Margaret Priest, Tony Scherman, Ayad Sinawi, David Urban and Scott Wallis.  Translinear was developed as a collaboration between artist Michael Davidson and curator Ihor Holubizky.  

Rather than grouping work by type or style, TRANSlinear proposes that painting has a particular visual language, which can generate a lively dialogue.  The diversity of work and approaches also underscores the traffic between image and the non-objective painting.  A key example is Tony Scherman's Napoleon in Egypt, one of a series of Napoleonic-subject paintings that the artist described as forensic portraits.  While the investigation of the dark areas of the human psyche and history are important to Scherman, so too are the quality and process of paint and materials.  The painting presents physical evidence, in the drips and broad strokes of encaustic (wax mixed with pigment) and the process of erasure, sometimes to the bare canvas (as historical events can be also be muddied, embellished and erased).   

Tony Scherman, Napoleon in Egypt, 1999-2000, encaustic on canvas 183 x 183 cm

One of the exhibition's guiding principles was a 1965 statement by American curator Henry Geldzahler, who declared that,  "no painting or style of interest can be exhausted by aligning it with another; a work of art exists in an endless series of possible relationships not only with life, but with other works of art."  Accordingly, Davidson and Holubizky invited each of the host galleries to continue the spirit of dialogue by integrating work from their collection or drawn from the community into the TRANSlinear selection.  The open enquiry was extended by inviting Curator Joseph Wolin (New York) and Dr David Moos (Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama) to contribute essays to the catalogue and dialogue on painting.

TRANSlinear was originated and circulated by the McMaster Museum of Art.  It has been mounted at the Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery and Cambridge Galleries (Ontario), the Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, and Plug-In Gallery, Winnipeg, in collaboration with Gallery 1.1.1. at the University of Manitoba.  The tour will conclude at the University of Toronto Art Centre.

Ihor Holubizky, Curator

 

 

Exhibition images

 

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