DAVID GILANDERS | BALLAST

Having long addressed the problem of perception, David Gillanders features paintings that embrace the gap between the world and the idea we make of it. With this exhibition, the artist begins to address more personal concerns, exploring fragmentation of time and energy and his ambiguous relationship with the objects he has accumulated over time.

David Gillanders’ work occupies a shifting position on the spectrum between representation’s illusion of volume and space and the flatness of hard-edge abstraction. In this new body of work referencing the traditional still-life painting, combinations of patterns found in domestic clutter and material accumulation serve as conceptual and graphic structures. As he chooses to paint multiple points of view of a single object, an ordinary pile of clothes turns into something resembling sculptural monuments. The artist starts by creating different paintings of the same subject, with different formal approaches,which he cuts into strips and reorganizes in order to recreate the original version of the image represented.

The size of the horizontal bands, wide or narrow, indicatesdifferent moments of perception: the wider the band, the closer the view. Ballast focuses on pictorial languages ??and how such languages ??can question the personal experience of time and of domestic life.

David Gillanders was born in Toronto in 1968. He studied at the University of Western Ontario in London and later at McGill University in Montreal, where he lived for more than twenty years before recently relocating in Ottawa. Gillanders has exhibited his work in numerous exhibition centers and galleries including the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Grand Rapids Art Museum (Michigan, US) and the Bedford Gallery (California, US). He is part of numerous private and public collections, including the Dick and Betsy DeVos Collection, the The Prêt d’œuvres d’art collection of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Loto-Québec, BMO Financial Group and Le Méridien Versailles.