HOTSPOTS @Pictura Montreal

HOTSPOTS

ANTONIETTA GRASSI JANET JONES AMY SCHISSEL MONTRÉAL SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2020 2 P.M. TO 5 P.M.

PATRICK MIKHAIL in Montréal is pleased to present HOTSPOTS, an exhibition of new work by ANTONIETTA GRASSI, JANET JONES, and AMY SCHISSEL. The exhibition is a presentation of PICTURA, an event dedicated to the presentation and exhibition of contemporary painting in the expanded field, across the city of Montreal during the months of November and December 2020.

Antonietta Grassi, Janet Jones and Amy Schissel are three abstract painters who weave their perceptions of digital technology, speculative futurity, and feminism into their works. Their paintings break down the rigid boundaries between image and abstraction, borrowing and intermingling each unselfconsciously. Although their works allude to the strong tradition of Montréal Abstraction, primarily by male painters, they both honour and critique that past by "messing" with it in both form, colour, and concept. Unlike many artists who reference current technologies by employing digital media, these artists implicitly question it through the medium of painting itself. The very nature of painting makes it slow, direct, meditative, and intimately tied to the human body, in this case the female body. The traces of human touch, of the hand, are always visible.

In their work Grassi, Jones, and Schissel have all chosen to go against the grain; to create Hotspots!—points of tension, collision, and intensity that reflect upon our current world situation. -