Plein Meandering

CANADA is pleased to present Plein Meandering, a one-person exhibition by Ken D. Resseger in the gallery's project room. The intimately scaled works beckon viewers to come close, revealing scenes full of drama-whether roiling storm clouds over a heath or a couch tossed with an unruly afghan. Informed by Surrealism and the Tonalist movement of the 19th century, the works exude both comforting familiarity and strangeness. Mysterious light sources, from lamps, suns or moons suggest visitation from an otherworldly presence. Resseger's palette runs toward tertiary and warm earth tones allowing a moody atmosphere of repose and contemplation. The paintings are made slowly; the images are found gradually through the painting process. Resseger's idiosyncratic way of making is full of addition and subsequent erasure, giving the works a quavering skin-like feel. Removal adds as much as it subtracts and the paintings often feature seemingly incomplete passages. The blank spots carry the energetic residue of removal and redaction. Beyond the unusual ways they come into being, the works ultimately carry the sensation of comfort and trepidation in equal measure.