Martin Golland / Blue Room / 2008 / oil on canvas / 43 x 36 in / © Martin Golland Courtesy of the Artist and Birch Libralto

Shapeshift
March 15th – April 19th
Opening reception Saturday March 15th 2–5 PM
Birch Libralato
www.birchlibralato.com

‘Shapeshift’ will be Martin Golland’s debut show with Birch Libralato. Golland’s paintings (drawn upon the traditions of Surrealism and Cubism) attempt to create engulfing architectural spaces that evoke sensation, discovery and disorientation. These slipshod spaces, emptied of figures, suggest the residue of nameless ritual activity.

Golland explains that, “My work is built from a collection of gestures and painting languages that respond to the histories of abstraction and representation. [It] depicts overlooked architectural spaces that trigger experiences of the uncanny. The scenes presented in my work are emptied of figures, leaving only traces of hidden activity. My intent is to mark out the slippage between elements of safety and fear that are revealed in these scenarios.

I use a selection of competing modes of painting that function at various degrees of abstraction and representation. I work with a sourced inventory of leftover modernist styles and my own photography as departure points for my painting. I treat the photograph as a departure point for an improvised fiction. As I translate these elements into painting, the materiality of the paint warps representation and asserts its own pictorial logic through competing ranges of gesture, texture and form.

The discreet transitions between the various zones of the painting act as a metaphor for the fractured phenomenon of perception. Bent perspective and idiosyncratic colour work at cross-purposes to one another but provide temporary cohesion. Despite their disjunctive make-up, the engulfing spaces create an occasion for immersive experience. Each work presents a heightened moment – an upsurge of the visible - where the relationship between what is represented and what is seen becomes problematic and the consistency of the world wavers. As a result, the fugitive shifts of space act as a metaphor for the mind’s sway between reverie and dread.”