Installation view of Kelly Cade, BioIntervals & Sheryl Dudley, The Sea Was Never Blue, 2018, loop Gallery
Upon entering loop Gallery, I overheard Sheryl Dudley talking to her friend in her solo show The Sea Was Never Blue. As a Toronto based artist, Dudley has been a member of loop, an artist-run gallery, for a long time. As she said, most of her work focus on expressing both the physical and emotional responses to the world around her, especially to nature, and sometimes, to documents.
Dudley, in her series of new work, wanted to depict the “incidental moments” of life, that are otherwise too ephemeral to capture. This show is a continuation of her previous series, especially Skirting Damocles and Once ‘The World’ Arrives, inspired by her trip to Greenland. Dudley was amazed by the nature of the Arctic and decided to dedicate a series of work to the wonders she had witnessed. Expanded from this original idea, The Sea Was Never Blue includes several abstract pieces. A sense of ambiguity is intentional, as the artist encourages the viewers to create their own narratives rather than guiding their thoughts to specific interpretations.
Sheryl Dudley, Untitled #4 (left) and Untitled #5 (right) both archival giclée monoprint with graphite, coloured pencil and pastel, 40.5 x 48.5 cm, 2018
I found the complexity of texture enchanting. The constant changing of strokes has endowed these artworks with various visual effects: some are highly saturated and contrasted, while others are entirely the opposite. Under such collisions, a type of “metallic particle” appears in some work, that further enriches the texture of the painting.
Sheryl Dudley, Untitled #11 (left) and Untitled #9 (right), both archival giclée monoprint with graphite, coloured pencil and pastel, 40.5 x 48.5 cm, 2018, close up details
BioIntervals by Kelly Cade is a series of abstract photography. Cade started her art career as a painter and you can see the painterly values in her work, even when she is experimenting with different mediums. In BioIntervals she aimed to capture the wind rippling across the surface of the water. She made a series of photographs, then she worked on composing the image by sections, putting them together, until she found the final one, which she enriched with a linear pattern of iridescent circles. Cade’s works are displayed by the glass window, so they reflect the fluctuating light and the cityscape from outside; making them even more dynamic. When evening comes, and cars will be driving by, their colored lights would smoothly blend in with the photographic imagery; causing the artwork to go through a metamorphosis and become a perfect fusion of art and nature, statics and dynamics.
Kelly Cade, BioIntervals #12, 12 x 59 inches and details (top)
Cade stated, that in BioIntervals she wants to encourage the audience to think about the conventional way we examine nature, the intervals we created by logical means, “our systems of measurement.” That reminds me of the philosophical theory from Kant, that our perceptions of things are not recognition of the things themselves, but instead what we experience when they appear to us. More specifically, our minds have a consistent way of restructuring our experiences and through this programming system, anything can be “translated” into information that would be perceived subjectively. In her work Cade challenges the viewers to re-examine the way we understand intervals and offers an entry to other possible dimensions that may coexist with the one we used to.
Kelly Cade, BioIntervals #5, 17 x 37 inches
The Sea Was Never Blue by Sheryl Dudley and Kelly Cade’s BioIntervals are two remarkable exhibitions, where the artworks are complementing each other. If you are wandering in town and looking forward to enjoy some abstract art – do not miss this show.
Text and photo: Iris Wu
Exhibition information: Kelly Cade, BioIntervals & Sheryl Dudley, The Sea Was Never Blue, July 21- August 12, 2018, loop Gallery, 1273 Dundas Street West, Toronto. Gallery hours: Wed & Thur, 12 – 5 pm; Fri & Sat, 12 – 6 pm; Sun, 1 – 4 pm.