ANGELL GALLERY is pleased to present DANIEL HUTCHINSON: WHEN THE LIGHTHOUSE IS DARK BETWEEN FLASHES, new paintings by this acclaimed Canadian abstractionist. The exhibition is in the West Gallery and Project Room from August 22 to September 27, 2014. An opening reception will be held on August 22, 6:00 to 9:00 PM.
Daniel Hutchinson is fast becoming one of Canada’s most esteemed abstract painters. In this exhibition Hutchison pushes his signature form — near-black monochromes in which meticulously painted abstract shapes glisten in response to light — in dazzling new directions.
While having roots in modernist geometric abstraction and the “black” paintings of such artists as Kasimir Malevich, Ad Reinhardt and Frank Stella, Hutchinson also shares with minimalism an emphasis on the viewer’s shifting perception as an integral component of the work. At the same time he also evokes historical painting, where breathtaking results are the result of painstaking labour and hard-won skill.
In WHEN THE LIGHTHOUSE IS DARK BETWEEN FLASHES, Hutchinson references both the macrocosm and the microcosm. Titles point to broad analogies with astronomy, cosmology and particle physics, but also refer to the works’ immediate physical environment and the very materials of their essence.
The series Paintings for Sterling Board feature brushstrokes that respond to supports built from sterling board, a compressed-wood product that Hutchinson honours by replicating its textured, irregular surface in dark, glistening oil paint. In Painting for Sterling Board and Nonagon Shape (dark energy expansion) the radiating polygonal shape of the frame provides a visual analogy to the dark matter energy propelling the rapid expansion of the universe.
Works in the series Paintings for Picture Frames respond to their surroundings, quite literally, as interlacing curved or geometric brush strokes complement and contrast with the frames that contain them. Titles such as Frame As Molecular Cloud, and the illusion of depth created by contrasting areas of flat black and shimmering highlights, point to the external world. Yet these paintings’ non-objective nature pulls us firmly back to the realm of the abstraction and the artwork as thing in itself.
In Paintings for Electric Light, a series begun in 2013, brushstrokes are applied in response to fluorescent light fixtures arranged in various configurations. As reflected light shifts across the painting’s surface in accordance with the viewer’s movements, the sense of dynamism is palpable. Likening this relationship to the workings of a lighthouse (inspired by an analogy found in George Kubler’s The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things), Hutchinson states:
“Impossible to view fully from any one vantage point, the movement of the body of the viewer reveals the carefully coordinated formal relationships of colour, texture and surface, acting out the metaphor of the lighthouse; navigation, discovery, adventure and so on. Like the stars in the night sky, which pierce the blackness of the void with points of pulsing, coloured light, the lighthouse guides wayward travellers home.”
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Daniel Hutchinson received his BFA from the Emily Carr Institute in Vancouver and his MFA from NSCAD University in Halifax. He has exhibited across North America, Australia and Sweden. In 2013, Hutchinson’s work appeared in solo exhibitions at YYZ Artists' Outlet and Angell Gallery in Toronto, in the national survey The Painting Project, at L'Université du Québec à Montréal, and in the Micah Lexier curated show, More Than Two, at The Power Plant in Toronto. Accolades include two times semi-finalist in the RBC Canadian Painting Competition and the prestigious Brucebo Foundation Artist Residency in Gotland, Sweden, among others. Upcoming projects include a two-person exhibition at Saint Mary’s University Art Gallery, Halifax and Painting Hamilton at the Art Gallery of Hamilton in November 2014.
