Eliza Griffiths Action Paintings

Eliza Griffiths Action Paintings

Vernissage: Thursday, November 5 at 6 pm
Exhibition: November 6 to 28, 2009
Artist’s Talk: Thursday, November 19 at 7 pm

Exhibition Press Release:

(Action: the bringing about of an alteration by force or through a natural agency) The McClure Gallery exhibition Action Paintings features new works by Montreal-based artist Eliza Griffiths. This recent body of figurative paintings and drawings proposes a consideration of different kinds of action within the two-dimensional field. Using her cast of recurring characters, Griffiths continues her exploration of social and psychological dynamics through the depiction of flamboyant human gestures such as running, brawling, gambling, etc. The exaggerated poses of her figures embody notions of forced action, suspended action, and non-action (as in the spiritual Taoist practice of wu wei), as metaphors for addressing complex metaphysical and existential questions.

As with all of Griffiths’ work, her preoccupation with human experience, identity stability and mutability, gender, desire, love, and trauma is traced through the suggested narrative tableaux she stages. In creating characters distilled from these tableaux, much like film stills, Griffiths produces works that invest the viewer personally, creating dialogue and ambiguity between subject and object, viewer and viewed. Her most recent work elaborates what were primarily psychological explorations into a more collective psychic space.