The show of paintings by Nicole Lebel and Daniel Whiting at the Maison de la Culture Côte des Neiges, succinctly titled Peintures, is an inspired piece of curating. Both Lebel and Whiting are good painters in their own right. Lebel's two-dimensional multimedia works (both large and small) consist of intricate, layered patterns of geometric shapes rendered in delicate tonal harmonies of grays. The precise graphic nature of her work recalls M. C. Escher.
Whiting's oils, on the other hand, are big bombastic things: great masses of black juxtaposed with peeks and slashes of vivid colour and weave-patterned exercises in colour placement. His vast, amorphous shapes are compelling, just as Lebel's canvasses are strangely hypnotic.
The joy of this show, therefore, is seeing how the two works interact; Lebel's cool graphic precision and Whiting's tactile frenzy set each other off in weird, wonderful ways. At 5290 Côte des Neiges, until July 14.
The show of paintings by Nicole Lebel and Daniel Whiting at the Maison de la Culture Côte des Neiges, succinctly titled Peintures, is an inspired piece of curating. Both Lebel and Whiting are good painters in their own right. Lebel's two-dimensional multimedia works (both large and small) consist of intricate, layered patterns of geometric shapes rendered in delicate tonal harmonies of grays. The precise graphic nature of her work recalls M. C. Escher.