ALLSORTS

Scott White Contemporary Art is delighted to present Allsorts, a solo exhibition of sculptural paintings and prints by Canadian artist Matthew Hawtin. Having participated in group shows as well as art fairs, Allsorts marks Hawtin’s debut solo exhibition with the gallery which will examine the evolution of the artist’s Torqued Series.

Started in 1998, the Torqued Paintings on shaped canvas were an investigation into the basic principles of painting - line, shape, color and form. Custom-built stretcher frames “torqued” the painting surface. In recent developments to this series, the wooden frame has been constructed with no perpendicular sides to create a new and dynamic shape and surface.

This continued evolution of work bought about a new variant of the series in 2009. The ‘Torqued Panels’ emerged out of the desire to remove the physical structure of the paintings (i.e. the stretcher frame), and to focus more intently on only surface. Fiberglass panels and custom mounting brackets were chosen to achieve painted torqued surfaces in varying sizes, shapes and colors that seem to ‘float off the wall’, giving them a weightlessness and presence apart from conventional paintings.

This lightness of form is also explored in the new corner works, an idea in development for the past 4 years. It is a physical object that contours to the angled meeting point of a room creating its own ambiguous curved space. The corner piece inhabits an area of a room usually devoid of interference yet it’s through intervention that something new exists – a colorful but quiet entity cornered for consideration.

Finally, the exhibition will feature Hawtin’s first silkscreen print edition – a set of four prints that further explore the abstract frame of the ‘Torqued Paintings’ series.

The sculptural nature of Hawtin’s work situates them across disciplines, blurring the line between painting and sculpture, design and architecture. Although differing in materials, each series is interconnected through a similar visual dialogue, prescribing to a ‘less is more’ philosophy. The corner piece grew from the panels and the panels came from the paintings – a slow divergent evolution of ideas investigating line, shape, color, and texture.