Graham Gillmore
24 Apr - 24 May 2008
GRAHAM GILLMORE
"Your Swollen Overtures Undermine My Shrink"
Galleria Fucares is pleased to present Your Swollen Overtures Undermine My Shrink, an exhibition of new work by British Columbia and New York-based artist Graham Gillmore.
Graham Gillmore, renowned for his large text-based panel paintings and darkly comedic malapropisms, presents new works that continue to dig further into the delicate interplay between our conscious and unconscious minds. Most of the phrases used by Gillmore reflect personal experiences in his relationships with others as well as the world around him. Gillmore’s newest works, on both panel and ledger paper mounted to canvas, are the kind of confessionals you’d expect from a master of the enigmatic phrase—snippets of internal dialogue and external reports that both confess and conceal his most inner thoughts and anxieties.
By blowing the whistle on himself Gillmore draws attention away from his private life and directs it towards his own artistic process, protecting the seductive ambivalence of his message. For what Gillmore wants is “to reconstruct past experience truthfully while maintaining an allegiance to, and/or custody over potential backfires, misinterpretations and spin-offs.”
Set against a minimalist wash of primary colors, his words, like their meanings, are multidimensional: routed into board, often obscured and unevenly spaced, they are unstable and unsettling, simultaneously addressing and rebuffing the viewer. Phrases such as “Kiss Kill Kiss”, “No Cons No Pros” and the longer, “Revel in Unlimited Space For More Of What You Love” read simultaneously as mantras, testimonies, statements of fact, and ominous invectives, all before offering themselves over to the viewer for interpretation.
The title piece is one of Gillmore’s most exciting works on canvas, one of which was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York for an exhibition in 2009, using ledger paper and water-based paint. Your Swollen Overtures Undermine My Shrink perfectly represents Gillmore’s fluid, organic approach to language, where disparate letters are bound and tied by the thinnest of lines, the ledger paper provides a natural setting to a message that is both anxiety laden and seductive.
Graham Gillmore was born in Vancouver and studied at Emily Carr College of Art & Design. He exhibits internationally and was included in the Learn to Read exhibition at the Tate Modern, London. His work is in various permanent collections including the Museum of Modern Art, NY. Gillmore currently lives and works in New York, NY and Winlaw, BC.
"Your Swollen Overtures Undermine My Shrink"
Galleria Fucares is pleased to present Your Swollen Overtures Undermine My Shrink, an exhibition of new work by British Columbia and New York-based artist Graham Gillmore.
Graham Gillmore, renowned for his large text-based panel paintings and darkly comedic malapropisms, presents new works that continue to dig further into the delicate interplay between our conscious and unconscious minds. Most of the phrases used by Gillmore reflect personal experiences in his relationships with others as well as the world around him. Gillmore’s newest works, on both panel and ledger paper mounted to canvas, are the kind of confessionals you’d expect from a master of the enigmatic phrase—snippets of internal dialogue and external reports that both confess and conceal his most inner thoughts and anxieties.
By blowing the whistle on himself Gillmore draws attention away from his private life and directs it towards his own artistic process, protecting the seductive ambivalence of his message. For what Gillmore wants is “to reconstruct past experience truthfully while maintaining an allegiance to, and/or custody over potential backfires, misinterpretations and spin-offs.”
Set against a minimalist wash of primary colors, his words, like their meanings, are multidimensional: routed into board, often obscured and unevenly spaced, they are unstable and unsettling, simultaneously addressing and rebuffing the viewer. Phrases such as “Kiss Kill Kiss”, “No Cons No Pros” and the longer, “Revel in Unlimited Space For More Of What You Love” read simultaneously as mantras, testimonies, statements of fact, and ominous invectives, all before offering themselves over to the viewer for interpretation.
The title piece is one of Gillmore’s most exciting works on canvas, one of which was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York for an exhibition in 2009, using ledger paper and water-based paint. Your Swollen Overtures Undermine My Shrink perfectly represents Gillmore’s fluid, organic approach to language, where disparate letters are bound and tied by the thinnest of lines, the ledger paper provides a natural setting to a message that is both anxiety laden and seductive.
Graham Gillmore was born in Vancouver and studied at Emily Carr College of Art & Design. He exhibits internationally and was included in the Learn to Read exhibition at the Tate Modern, London. His work is in various permanent collections including the Museum of Modern Art, NY. Gillmore currently lives and works in New York, NY and Winlaw, BC.