GRAHAM GILLMORE “I Talk to Myself Because I Listen”
Opening: Thursday October 17, 2024
Time: 6 - 8 pm
1520 Queen Street W. Toronto M6R 1A4
General Hardware is pleased to present Graham Gillmore’s solo exhibition of new paintings.
Artist Statement
“All language is visual when read.” - Johanna Drucker
Some artists stockpile ideas for future work, as though filling the creative refrigerator for a rainy day. For me, the painting I’ve just completed is what informs the next one. In this sense, I’m really making one big painting. When creating an image that gives me pleasure, I follow up by finding that essential spark and then make another one so that I may bask in the gratification of selective memory.
But ideas don’t always develop in a linear fashion. Sometimes, when I’ve hit upon a text, form and color that resonate with each other, I’ll go back, turn it on its head, and use it again. After all, Cezanne painted Mont Sainte-Victoire over thirty times through his career.
The paradoxical tension between language and matter involves the visible word as a physical object. “The word made flesh” is how Johanna Drucker describes it in her book, Figuring the Word.
I’m interested in how texts can be material substances that also signify linguistic meaning; writing is not just made of thought but also of marks. This form of alchemy satisfies my hunger for both formal abstraction and storytelling, without being bogged down by conventional pictorial representation- the best of both worlds.
A painting is worth pursuing when its voice, or speech sound- which is spoken through the visible word- gels with the aesthetic complexity of the image itself. Guillaume Apollinaire’s pictorial texts, or “Calligrammes” from the early twentieth century come to mind.
I want a painting to have a feeling of transition, as though it’s in the process of becoming something else: a chrysalis, a beautiful secret, a seduction. These are vulnerable desiring-machines that could fall to pieces at any moment.
One painting offers hope, another screams out for help. In the words of the poet Tom Wayman, we try to shed light on “The shadows we mistake for love.”
GG 2024
Gillmore lived in New York for over 25 years and has positioned himself internationally. His reputation extends across Canada, the United States and in Europe with recent exhibitions held in Toronto, Vancouver, Mexico City, San Francisco, New York, Miami Beach, Madrid and Berlin. Earlier exhibitions include “Learn to Read” at the TATE Modern alongside John Baldessari and Carol Bove. His work is collected by the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Audain Art Museum, British Columbia; the Ghent Museum, Belgium; Gian Enzo Sperone, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto; The Art Gallery of Ontario, RCA Records, New York; The Royal Bank of Canada; The Bank of Montreal; Toronto Dominion Bank; Scotiabank; The Vancouver Art Gallery; and numerous other institutions and private collections worldwide. He has been featured in publications such as Canadian Art, Border Crossings, W Magazine, Art News, ArtForum, L.A. Weekly, C Magazine, and the New York Times Magazine.
Image: (Detail) I Talk to Myself Because I Listen, oil and acrylic on canvas, 85 x 54 inches, 2024
Graham Gillmore, “Help Me, Help You, Help Me”, 60 x 48 inches, oil and acrylic in canvas, 2024
Graham Gillmore, How to Talk to People, 24 x 18 inches, oil and acrylic on canvas, 2024
Graham Gillmore, You Will Change, 30 x 36 inches, oil and acrylic in canvas, 2024