Riopelle, Gaucher, Schutz: Contemporary Abstraction at the Corkin Gallery in Toronto
By Hadrien Volle
The canvases follow each other, but they are not alike. Corkin Gallery, located in the Historic Distillery District of Toronto, has brought together, in a high-quality exhibition, artworks from Montréal, Toronto, and New York in order to highlight the connections between different generations of artists.
Traces of Abstraction: 1958-2020 welcomes works by historical artists like Jean-Paul Riopelle, Yves Gaucher, and Jules Olitski, alongside their pupils and successors, including Leopold Plotek, Larry Poons, and Dana Schutz.
“Ideas are born when I see things and over the past year, connections have appeared to me,” says Jane Corkin, the director of the art gallery. “For example, when Vincent Barré [one of the exhibited artists] was in Toronto, he saw an exhibition by Olitski.”
She adds that the dialogue between the artists also appears between Young-Il Ahn and Jean Albert McEwen, who worked with capturing light on water ten years apart. She concludes “Through all these canvases, you can see how artists influence each other from all continents.”
When one visits the beautiful space that the gallery occupies, the connections between the artworks are apparent from wall to wall. Abstraction requires significant work with colours and light, and the result is a variety of artworks, that together appear coherent.
David Urban, one of the artists represented by the gallery, is exhibiting three of his works in Traces of Abstraction. He is delighted to see these artworks brought together and appreciates the scope of the dialogues created: “Some of these paintings are historical, others are news, but it looks just like the visual dialogue I have in my head.”
He remembers being fascinated by the relationship between colours when he was a student studying the paintings of Yves Gaucher. His taste for colours can be found in one of his masterful canvases hung in the exhibition, Grenadier N°3.
Beyond Boundaries
One of the paintings on display, by Jean-Paul Riopelle, comes from a European collection. Jane Corkin adds that this is the work Riopelle chose to show when he first exhibited in Germany.
We also note a piece by Dana Schutz, famous in the world of contemporary American art, which represents fish trying to escape from the canvas.
Jane Corkin is pleased to have succeeded in transcending the barriers between the art worlds of New York, Toronto, and Montréal: “These cities are connected and it is easy to be centered on one or the other, but artists aren't interested in that, one of the joys of art is having no boundaries.”
Although the exhibition is quite short, consisting of twenty paintings alongside a few sculptures by Vincent Barré, it offers a beautiful view of artworks rarely brought together in this way.
Traces of Abstraction: 1958-2020, on view now until July 29th, 2023 at Corkin Gallery, 7 Tank House Lane in Toronto. The artworks can also be found online at corkingallery.com.
May 4, 2023
