Jeremy Hof & Sasha Pierce at Jessica Bradley Art + Projects
Until Feb. 11, 1450 Dundas St. W., Toronto; jessicabradleyartprojects.com Walking into Jessica Bradley Art + Projects, you will see two sets of very attractive paintings.
One set, by Jeremy Hof, contains bright, cheerful variations on mandalas, concentric circles and vertiginous spirals. The other set, by Sasha Pierce, contains finely detailed cross hatchings of paint, lines of quiet colour applied in fan shapes and enfolded pie slices. Both please the eye enormously, and make a good pair – Hof’s Pop hot tones enliven Pierce’s wooly hues, and Pierce’s geometry-derived patterns anchor Hof’s dreamy swirls.
What you will not see, but will enjoy looking deeper into once you get the inside dope (always ask gallerists for more information, they don’t bite), are the completely crazed (in the fun way) working practices employed by both artists.
First, Hof.
Taking a simple square of panel, Hof applies hundreds of layers acrylic paint, with each new layer completely smothering the last. This takes months. The layers of paint are applied in a system, one carefully chosen colour after another; a system that will later be revealed by Hof’s subsequent interventions onto/into the surface. When all the layers are built up, Hof then picks up a sheet of sandpaper, of a fine grade, and gently, slowly, patiently rubs down into the layers, rubs until the various layers are all exposed, creating a concave pit ringed by colour.
Imagine a slice of tree, with the growth rings exposed, mounted upright on a wall, and you have a sense of the paintings’ progress being revealed. Also, look at the paintings from the side and you will notice a gentle concavity in the spaces where Hof has burrowed into his own layer cakes.
Pierce’s technique is similarly maddening to contemplate, especially if you are prone to carpal tunnel syndrome.
By packing oil paints (one or more colours) into a tube with a nozzle at the end (imagine the icing tubes used to decorate cakes), Pierce gently winds the different strands of paint into tiny, thread-thin streams of crisscrossed, braided colour. Then she does it again, and again, and again, until her linen base is covered in a kind of tapestry of paint. Each strand is as hard as a cat’s whisker but twinkles, as if sub-stitched with matte metallic seams. Bright wiggles of pinging colour form irruptive, near-microscopic liquid sequins.
As each cluster of Pierce’s paint cords grows outward from a narrow, singular point, a vertex birthing two angles – and any given work can contain dozens of such vertices – it is impossible while watching a Pierce work unfold not to think of both the long history of Op Art, with it’s eye-popping, mathematically driven illusions or, counterintuitively, homespun textiles such as quilts.
Some viewers may find Hof’s burnished devolutions, his active de-painting, too precious, too much work for too little reward (as if hard work is meant only for spectacles and/or colossal works). Likewise, some viewers may find Pierce’s fussiness wearying, even stifling.
But there are always many ways to read paintings, and, as much space as I’ve given both artist’s techniques aside, one can easily revel in these transcendent and transporting works without oversubscribing to the work-ethic connotations both carry (but, to be fair, do not overplay).
See these works as they present themselves first, as covetable objects that celebrate the materiality of paint. Then, if you are so inclined, investigate the processes that fuel the works. But remember that if the paintings were not so deliciously inviting in the first place, not so happy to see you, you would hardly (nor, certainly, would I) bother to discover their studio secrets.
Christine Negus at Gallery TPW
Until Feb. 18, 56 Ossington Ave., Toronto; gallerytpw.ca
