Shirley Wiitasalo

17 April to 24 May 2014

Please join us for the opening on Thursday, 17 April from 7 to 9 p.m.

From his catalogue essay of the same name, written for her 2001 solo exhibition at The Power Plant, critic Barry Schwabsky declares Shirley Wiitasalos paintings display the ineffability effect. Her paintings hold an inscrutable power, of image and non-image, of feigned haphazard marks that are actually the result of a deliberate and selective working practice. In this exhibition, Wiitasalo presents two suites of paintings created using a transfer process. In the first set of works, on view on the gallerys ground level, bold colours like teal, orange, and pink fill each frame. Within these grounds Wiitasalo has inserted distinct floating fields in contrasting colours and encircled by ribbon-like boundaries. In the paintings on view on the gallerys second floor, parallel bands of black paint run from edge to edge over metallic silver grounds. The stripes undulate and fold due to the variations in the paints opacity and the pressure of its application. Our eyes strain to see the residual ghost of an image, but Wiitasalos paintings prefer not to divulge any of their secrets. They remain comfortably, and agreeably, elusive.