DRIVEN TO ABSTRACTION | GROUP SHOW: CANAN TOLON

Canan Tolon
Untitled, 2011
oil on canvas
20 x 16 inches


Driven to Abstraction

 Featuring work by

Andrea Belag

Lisa Corinne Davis

Amy Ellingson

Catherine Howe

Rebecca Smith

Dannielle Tegeder

Canan Tolon

Carrie Yamaoka

June 9 – July 23, 2011

Opening reception: Thursday, June 9, 6 – 8 PM

CANAN TOLON
STATEMENT

Space is the main subject in my work. I am interested in the way we visualize it, the way we treat it, politicize, imagine, and remember it. I use a technique that is as random as it is premeditated and studied. My paintings are formally as precise, rhythmic, and structured as they are evasive, accidental and fluent. Although I do not use print or collage, I use a technique in my paintings that imitates photographic prints, using tools like straight edges and knives to produce an effect of instant reality, where evidence alluding to places and events are implied. It is only upon closer inspection that the “photographic reality” falls apart, and the painting’s illusion revealed. Monotone paintings are visually closer to photography, and therefore visually closer a realistic documentation as our eyes are trained to consider photographic images as true testimonies. I work with fragmented compositions and figure-ground arrangements, and I construct perspectives of conflicting views locked in the painting’s multiple glazes. It takes time to see through the superimposed layers–just as it takes time for the eye to conjugate the overlapping fragments. Multiple-eye levels that range from plan-view to panorama, and focus from close-up to remote, cause a dispersal of information in the composition. My aim is to produce paintings in which spaces are recognizable yet elude description.

           

CANAN TOLON
Bio