Jason Hallows’ recent work, Demonstration, exploring the relationship between an object’s production and its display opens at the McIntosh Gallery Friday, July 15.
Demonstration consists of a series of table-like constructions on which rubbery sheets of dried paint are placed. Other such sheets are hung like pictures on the wall. The tables include moulds in which these sheets of paint were cast. Residual traces of paint on the mould and, conversely, wood-grain texture on the paint, provide further evidence of the entire process.
Hallows disrupts this satisfyingly linear narrative through various temporal and spatial recursions. Salvaged studio materials and workshop debris bring unexpected histories to bear on the work. Viewers must negotiation through an array of such heterogeneous materials, which appear to struggle and resist their newly assembled contexts.
All of which makes Hallows work unabashedly provisional. Parts of one work show up in another. Entire sculptures are taken apart and reassembled. Hallows reminds us that the words “demonstration” and “monster” are related in order to suggest how the implicit narratives of production and display in his work are distorted through corruptive transgression and parasitic transformation.
Hallows completed undergraduate studies at OCAD and received an MFA from the University of Guelph. He is currently a PhD candidate in the Art and Visual Culture program at The University of Western Ontario where his supervisory committee includes Patrick Mahon (primary advisor), Bridget Elliott and David Merritt. Hallows is also co-director, with Anna Madelska, of The Parker Branch, an independent gallery and archive.
The opening reception begins at 7 p.m. and the exhibit will be on display until Aug. 17.
For more information visit the McIntosh Gallery website.
