Thresholds

Thresholds
Philip Gurrey
March 27-April 6, 2024

Satellite Project Space
121 Dundas St, London, ON
Wednesday-Friday 2-7pm, Saturday 12-5pm (closed on March 29 and 30)

Opening Reception: Thursday, March 28, 5-7pm

Thresholds

Threshold, noun, – “The level at which something starts to happen or have an effect” or “the point just before a new situation.”¹

In abstract terms the word threshold refers to the anticipation of something. In physical terms it is the demarcation of a line separating one space from another. It is Old English in origin and related to the German dialect Drischaufel the first part of which means ‘tread’.

The combining of a sense of anticipation with the physical demarcation of space describes the works in this show rather aptly. Steel sheets barricade us in, or do they keep us out. Lines made by walking are evidenced on the gallery floor. There are metaphors to walls, fences, forests, light and fire, human and nonhuman markers of space and by way of anticipation there is also a reference to time. Human time, nonhuman timescales, the movement of time, time evidenced becomes frozen time.

The painted works in this show play with the painted surface as if it were a threshold. They evidence a kind of geological time; they are constructed through layers of colour which are excavated to reveal colour within. The painted gestures are erasures, wipes, eradication as construction. The canvas occupies a middle ground between real and illusionistic space. The surface of the painting acts as both a boundary and a portal. It pushes the viewer back into the reality of the exhibition space while simultaneously asking the viewer to penetrate the painted surface and peer deep into illusionistic space.

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¹ Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), s.v. “Threshold.”
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/threshold