fbpx

duet

Opening Reception
Saturday January 18, 2020 - 2pm to 4pm

Artist Talk with Francisco-Fernando Granados
Saturday March 7, 2020 - 2pm to 4pm

  • Jack Bush + Francisco-Fernando Granados installation at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery 2019. Image by Ingrid Forster.
  • Installation View
  • Left: FFG, letters, 2018-2019, digital drawing; Right: Jack Bush, Untitled (2 drawings), 1972, felt pen and graphite on paper, Collection of the Robert McLaughlin Gallery
  • Installation View
  • Installation View
  • Left: FFG; Centre: Jack Bush, Down to Three, 1960,  charcoal, graphite and acrylic on canvas, Collection of the Robert McLaughlin Gallery; Right: FFG
  • Francisco-Fernando Granados, towards a minor abstraction (Translation), 2016-2018, digital drawing; vinyl on wall
  • Francisco-Fernando Granados, letters, 2018-2019, digital drawing; chromogenic prints mounted on plexiglass
  • Installation View
  • Left: Jack Bush, Stripes to the Right, 1965, colour serigraph on paper, Collection of the Robert McLaughlin Gallery; Right: FFG, letters, 2018-2019, digital drawing, chromogenic print mounted on plexi
  • Installation View; Left: Francisco- Fernando Granados; Right: Jack Bush, Collection of the Robert McLaughlin Gallery
  • Francisco-Fernando Granados, towards a minor abstraction (Translation), 2016-2018, digital drawing; vinyl on wall
  • Installation View
  • Francisco-Fernando Granados, towards a minor abstraction (Translation), 2016-2018, digital drawing; vinyl on wall
  • Left: Jack Bush, Breakthrough, 1958, oil on canvas (Collection of the Robert McLaughlin Gallery); Right: FFG, letters, 2018-2019, digital drawing; chromogenic prints mounted on plexi
  • Right: Francisco-Fernando Granados, towards a minor abstraction (Translation), 2016-2018, digital drawing; vinyl on wall
  • Gallery Wall, Installation View, Jack Bush + Francisco-Fernando Granados
Previous Images
  • Jack Bush + Francisco-Fernando Granados installation at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery 2019. Image by Ingrid Forster.
  • Installation View
  • Left: FFG, letters, 2018-2019, digital drawing; Right: Jack Bush, Untitled (2 drawings), 1972, felt pen and graphite on paper, Collection of the Robert McLaughlin Gallery
  • Installation View
  • Installation View
  • Left: FFG; Centre: Jack Bush, Down to Three, 1960,  charcoal, graphite and acrylic on canvas, Collection of the Robert McLaughlin Gallery; Right: FFG
  • Francisco-Fernando Granados, towards a minor abstraction (Translation), 2016-2018, digital drawing; vinyl on wall
  • Francisco-Fernando Granados, letters, 2018-2019, digital drawing; chromogenic prints mounted on plexiglass
  • Installation View
  • Left: Jack Bush, Stripes to the Right, 1965, colour serigraph on paper, Collection of the Robert McLaughlin Gallery; Right: FFG, letters, 2018-2019, digital drawing, chromogenic print mounted on plexi
  • Installation View; Left: Francisco- Fernando Granados; Right: Jack Bush, Collection of the Robert McLaughlin Gallery
  • Francisco-Fernando Granados, towards a minor abstraction (Translation), 2016-2018, digital drawing; vinyl on wall
  • Installation View
  • Francisco-Fernando Granados, towards a minor abstraction (Translation), 2016-2018, digital drawing; vinyl on wall
  • Left: Jack Bush, Breakthrough, 1958, oil on canvas (Collection of the Robert McLaughlin Gallery); Right: FFG, letters, 2018-2019, digital drawing; chromogenic prints mounted on plexi
  • Right: Francisco-Fernando Granados, towards a minor abstraction (Translation), 2016-2018, digital drawing; vinyl on wall
  • Gallery Wall, Installation View, Jack Bush + Francisco-Fernando Granados
Next Images

duet

Jack Bush + Francisco-Fernando Granados

Curated by Fynn Leitch and Leila Timmins

Presented in partnership with the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa

On view until August 16, 2020

duet brings together work by Jack Bush and Francisco-Fernando Granados to both invoke the aesthetic legacies of modernist abstraction and to initiate a dialogue on contemporary understandings of this period and its visual strategies. By pairing paintings and prints from the mid-twentieth century with site-specific and digital works from a contemporary moment, the exhibition creates a conversation on abstraction that transcends space, time, and medium.

Known for his bold use of colour and iconic compositions, Jack Bush (1909-1977) was a pioneer of post-painterly abstraction and one of the first Canadian artists to gain international recognition. A prominent member of the Painter’s Eleven (1953-1960)who came together through a common commitment to minimalism and abstractionBush helped to solidify the importance of abstraction within the Canadian canon and inspire generations of artists.

As an extension of his interest in form, for the past three years, Francisco-Fernando Granados has maintained a near-daily drawing practice informed by the compositional strategies of Jack Bush. Produced on a touch-screen phone, these series of abstract drawings are both an affectionate homage and a quiet subversion. Trained in the history and practice of drawing and painting, Granados was inspired by the National Gallery’s 2014-15 Jack Bush retrospective, an event that closely coincided with the death of his father. The ritual of drawing became folded into a process of mourning and grief that has extended into his everyday life. How does one pay homage? How do we contend with the legacies of those who have come before us?

Granados’ series towards a minor abstraction and letters are both offerings and provocations. Here, with trained fingers moving across the smooth and familiar surface of a screen, Granados paints to dialogue in a medium that is built for quick exchange. Guiding the abstract compositional impetus away from Modernist concepts of autonomy, the works push towards an open-ended politics informed by his queer and refugee experiences. In duet, the discourse between past and the contemporary is understood as ongoing and reciprocal. The dialogue between Jack Bush and Francisco-Fernando Granados, though displaced by decades, reaches across history in an effort to touch that which seems untouchable, to reshape what seems set.

 

Photo documentation courtesy of Matthew Hayes, unless otherwise indicated.

Regular Hours: Wednesday to Sunday from 11 am to 5 pm. Admission is by Donation.

X
Skip to content