Diary w/o Dates is a solo exhibition of new work by Allison Katz displayed across both Oakville Galleries venues. Reflecting the diverse range of Katz's production, the exhibition considers the unique character of each site.
At Centennial Square, Katz reacts to the theatrical black-box design of the gallery and the concrete geometry of late 1960s civic architecture with a large-scale installation of new paintings “in the round." At Gairloch Gardens, she presents a series of several new works—including posters, ceramics and a sand painting—that play on elements of circulation and repetition inherent to both her own process and the architecture of this former private residence on the shores of Lake Ontario.
For Katz, painting is a thread that connects seemingly disparate and sometimes contradictory elements. Motifs that recur in the artist's work often find spontaneous new connections in their exhibition contexts. Observation and close attention to language mix with anecdote, sensation and fantasy to inform her visual world, as does the feeling of time, which here is recast as circular and bodily, a subjective structure that can be dissolved and imagined anew.
At the centre of the exhibition is an understanding of painting as an expansive medium that is not static and contained, but constantly in flux, forming a chain of visual associations with myriad points of connection.
Allison Katz: Diary w/o Dates is organized in collaboration with MIT List Visual Arts Center.
