Ella Gonzales
Temporary lacework
From November 23 to December 23, 2023
“…we too want something that’s neither inside nor outside, neither a space nor a site, In an inhabitable surface that recognizes us, we’d like to gently sway.”
- Lisa Robertson, Occasional Works and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture
Galerie Nicolas Robert is pleased to present Temporary lacework, a solo exhibition of paintings and supports by Ella Gonzales. Grounded in a personal narrative of the Filipino diasporic experience, Temporary lacework considers the repetitive filling up and emptying out of space as a conceptual framework for examining painting as a generative medium within an expanded field of display.
On the surface, Gonzales’ paintings use geometric abstraction to communicate ambiguity through form. Her colorful, ghost-like architectures emerge through a layering of transparencies that are structured within a format of irregular boundaries. The works convey a sincere commitment to exploring the material possibilities of paint and a fascination with paint’s potential to express perpetual transformation. By shifting her supports beyond their traditional function as tools for display, Gonzales also explores the translation between psychic, pictorial, and physical space. Figure and ground are given equal footing as tools to further the painting’s fascination with the illusion of depth, while geometry becomes the unifier between two and three-dimensional space.
In Temporary lacework, Gonzales has achieved a poetic tension between volume and flatness that stems from a private place of uncertainty, but also adaptability. Her methodology involves both emphasizing and refusing the formal qualifiers of what makes a painting. This approach is disorienting but also generous, encouraging viewers to consider a reorientation of geometric abstraction from its tradition of non-specificity, and its potential for a radical expression of emotional intimacy.
Ella Gonzales is a Filipina-Canadian artist working between painting and Computer-Aided Design programs, as led by her interest in space making. She has recently shown work at The Power Plant, Toronto; Unit 17, Vancouver; Christie Contemporary, Toronto; Xpace Cultural Centre, Toronto; Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge; AXENÉO7, Gatineau; Hunt Gallery, Toronto; Galerie Nicolas Robert, Toronto; the plumb, Toronto; and Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre, Kingston. Gonzales holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Western University and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Guelph.
Ella Gonzales thanks the Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts for their support.
