Third Heat, Apr 3 – May 3, 2015

CANADA is pleased to announce “Third Heat” a group exhibition featuring Gina Beavers, Brian Belott, Annie Pearlman and Torey Thornton. These artists refresh the power of painting by dipping it into a bathtub of folkloric imagery, recycled printed media, playful personal narratives, ridiculously indulgent use of material and decorative motifs that emphasize the flatness of the medium. “Third Heat” exposes the after-hours nature of an artist's life in the big city, the solitude and solace of putting things together in order to create some sort of a psychic whole.

Gina Beavers' paintings are built up to the point of becoming bas relief sculpture. Made from acrylic paint and powdery additives like ground glass or pumice, the paintings savor the icky yumminess of foods on the cheeseburger level of the food pyramid, desserts, muscly men and sexy ladies. The commitment to her subject matter verges on obsessiveness, evoking Jay Defeo’s legendary painting The Rose or Richard Dreyfuss’s sculpture of Devil’s Tower in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Brian Belott’s take on modernism is piled high with pop allusions, found materials and a zanily inventive repertoire of art-making techniques. No aspect of the painting is safe; stretcher bars are replaced by layers of collaged paper and paint soaked cotton balls. Miles of painted yarn hold his compositions tight like a technicolor spiderweb. Patterns pick up and leave off like fragmented conversations, each part stands together representing the whole of a lived artistic practice.

The view from Annie Pearlman’s perch is both whimsical and grotty. Shapes and colors in lush primary hues recall high modernist painting while simultaneously forming structures to stage illustrations of urban fairytales. Trees and buildings crowd in animating doll-like figures out for a night of dancing. Paths, windows and fountains flip becoming abstract patterns. The pageantry and isolation of a glamorous urban life is explored, the lights are on, is anyone home?

Torey Thornton makes large scale abstract paintings that are full of scribbled marks, allusions to cities, suburbs and urban detritus. Made face-up on the floor of his studio, the paintings grow organically. Often Thornton starts with a premise or feeling that he pushes towards, like an oasis in the desert, through the process of making. The color is often boldly solid and confidently high chroma.

“Third Heat” is an experiment and a look into these four artists’ investment in image and abstraction that seems unhinged from prevailing dialogues surrounding the official discussion of contemporary painting.

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