MEMORY MELODY: Work from the Estate of ENN ERISALU

×

Expand

Enn Eirsalu, "Black and Blue," nd

mixed media on canvas, 68" x 60"

Gallery Jones is pleased to present Memory Melody, a solo exhibition of work by the late Canadian modernist painter Enn Erisalu (1943-2005). The exhibition highlights selected text-based works produced in the late 1980's-early 2000's, including some newly uncovered works on paper, that investigate the cognitive connections between linguistic and pictorial perception in the art viewer. Erisalu's large mixed-media works present us with carefully selected numbers, letters and symbols arranged on a painted canvas that beg to be considered and, at times, unscrambled through a process of linguistic synthesis.

Erisalu's work and legacy as an artist has been examined by several recognized art critics and historians including Robin Laurence, Chris Brayshaw, and Patrik Andersson. They cite his aesthetic influences in Cubism, Constructivism, Minimalism and Conceptualism among others. There is a collective regret in the early death of the gifted painter, whose work was often overlooked at the time of its making in Vancouver (though well-exhibited and collected in Toronto, Seattle, New York and in Europe, and it is included in the collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery). Only in hindsight will Erisalu' work and influence (in the words of Patrik Andersson) "take its rightful place" in the history of Vancouver art.