origin

This website hosts a selection of paintings and installations in the form of four separate series. Below, you'll find a brief discussion of each, hyperlinks (above) will fast-track you to specific areas.

Combining the subjects of the underworld and the corporeal, with a simplified approach to image making, the paintings that make up the ‘Origin’ series operate as both visual sign and physical trigger. Basic structural forms are manipulated in order to create a sense of physical unease: elements are held open, held down, or at times appear off balance through the pushing and pulling of interior spaces and unsteady round compositions. Imagery originally derived from underground caves, mine tunnels and rail systems, provide a contrast between industrial structure and a more primitive reading that comes from a notion of the underworld as less evolved and archaic.

Through the manipulation of imagery, unstable bodies emerge as anthropomorphic elements allow holes, tunnels, gaps etc, to illicit a somewhat carnal response. Most recent compositions in the form of diptychs, suggest a fraternal communication between spheres. Many of these works have names derived from the descending rings of Dante’s version of hell. Specifically, my interests are in adopting titles that continue a tendency toward a human countenance. In the work entitled against oneself: double blind for example, (named after Dante’s 7th circle triad), the gross manipulations of a tunnel system and associated ground have turned this imagery into a pliable cartoonish body; rectangular forms issue from, and obscure, cavernous gaping holes. Here, as in many of these visual plays, the opposition of the familiar against the indecipherable; the industrial against the organic, struggle toward a formation of meaning shaped by clues both physical and visual.

The'geology of morals' from 2003 is a series of two dimensional paintings paired with three dimensional objects that investigate the relationship between the earth’s literal surface (as a sort of outer-skin) and the ongoing physical movements, or structural material changes that continue to occur beneath it. At around the time I started creating this work, I also became fascinated by the philosophical writings of Deleuze & Guattari from the late 1980's that married the geologic with the biologic. The title of this series is directly derived from a chapter in Deleuze & Guattari's book A Thousand Plateaus from 1987. The series of painting installations that resulted were exhibited at the Joan & Martin Goldfarb Centre at York University, the Pari Nadimi Gallery in Toronto, and the Julianne Wellerdiek Gallery in Berlin.

With this series, simple three-dimensional forms illicit projections of visual information, physical extrusions, material pulsations, or deflations. As these forms operate in dialogue with the more traditional two-dimensional paintings, they have the potential to animate a reading of something unseen within the landscape - a geophysical pulse, a flow trajectory, or a physical state. This approach to painting (as a dialogue between the physical and the purely visual) offers an alternative to a traditional narrative in painting. Ultimately, it is an alternative that offers up more questions than it proposes to answer – questions of provenance, interpretation and process, both in terms of subject matter and medium. The goal is, however, not to present work that is neatly constrained and necessarily understood in its entirety by the viewer, but to set up a situation in painting within the parameters of the gallery space that has the potential to become fundamentally dislocating and strangely affecting.

The start of the series entitled 'mined sites'begins a long term preoccupation with geology, mining and landscape that continues (although less overtly) through to today. Having supported my artistic career working in the mining industry for the past ten years, it's not surprising that my remote mapping experiences and exposure to these odd landscapes, would insinuate themselves into my work in an undeniable way. This series features the industrial architecture and wide-open spaces often found in remote mining locations. Here, my goal is to convey a sense of human occupation through built, often decaying structures rather than through an overt human presence. This group of paintings was exhibited in various manifestations at venues such as the Modern Fuel Gallery in Kingston, as well as 1080 Bus, Mercer Union, the Tatar Alexander Gallery and the Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art (MOCCA), all Toronto venues from 2000-2002.

‘round the house’, dating back to 1997, is the earliest chronological series of paintings included on this website. The imagery posted includes two loosely related bodies of work incorporating figuration in both empty suburban landscapes and domestic interiors. This work was exhibited in several Toronto venues from 1997-98 including an exhibition entitled What does happen at Faktorie (a now defunct gallery downtown), Parables (an artist run exhibition), and Personal Grounds. In creating this work, I was interested in equating a vast expanse of space with a feeling of suspended time. Often accompanying the notion of expanded time is a sense of foreboding. This series of paintings differs from the subsequent three bodies of work included on this website due to its overt figurative content, however the vast open areas of space, sense of unease, as well as its muted colour palette are all aspects that are powerfully shared with subsequent work.

Suzanne Nacha – Jan 2009