Exhibitions

Hugh Mackenzie | Show 88
Dedicated to the memory of Dorothy Mackenzie 
September 10 - 22 
340 Dundas St. West

Show 88 is for Hugh Mackenzie a proclamation—of age, of loss, and of love. This September, Bau-Xi Gallery will be presenting new paintings by Mackenzie, whose powerful work has stirred the collective consciousness of audiences from the 1950s to the present day. Oil paintings draw on genres familiar to the artist—abstracted cityscapes and portraits that glimpse both the sublimity of the urban landscape and the dark intimacy of the human body in paint. Show 88 will also include works by the late Dorothy Mackenzie, to whom the entire exhibition is dedicated. Dorothy’s still life paintings will showcase her skilled hand in watercolour and oils while also serving as living memories in conversation with her husband's work.

The widespread, politically-charged graffiti decorating stately Neoclassical buildings in Buenos Aires is impossible to ignore. It is a visual contradiction which exposes the rift between the conservative elite and radical working class. Aesthetically, the bold colours of spray paint and the gestural, script-like application reshape its planar architectural forms into a highly personal expression. For the artist, the vandalized buildings of the Argentine capital reflect, "a need for a generation of people to be heard by way of a visual vocabulary which speaks out against the values of the establishment."

In 'Transition', Petterson utilizes the suit jacket - a Western symbol of masculine authority, formality, and professional prowess - as a vehicle to capture this notion. Physical suit jackets, painted in bold colour with a gestural, Sumi-e technique indicative of the artist's earlier work, become politicized sites revealing contradictory ideas of success and oppression in contemporary society. If the suit is a metaphor for the establishment, then the artist uses the garment as a canvas to liberate its socio-political identification.

Applying paint to the jacket prior to photographing it adds a new layer of dimension to Petterson's work, blurring the boundary between photography and painting that has come to be synonymous with his practice.