Tristram Lansdowne "Refuge"

Joshua Liner Gallery

poster for Tristram Lansdowne "Refuge"

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Joshua Liner Gallery presents Refuge, an exhibition of new paintings in watercolor by the Canadian artist Tristram Lansdowne. Lansdowne’s paintings of architectural ruins focus on themes of permanence, decay, and function inherent in constructed environments. Depicted with the delicacy of Roman frescoes after millennia of wear, these palimpsests carry traces of past lives, such as weathered billboards, chipped paint, graffiti, political campaign posters, or electrical wiring. The lightness of Lansdowne’s watercolors imbues these glimpses into the ravages of time with a gentle patina. Yet there’s ambiguity in his approach.
An idealistic view of the past is juxtaposed with the emotional vacancy of urban decay, a circumspect view of human progress in which outmoded architectural ideas mix with discarded pieces of the landscape.

In this new suite of fifteen medium- to large-sized works on paper, Lansdowne depicts decrepit houses, buildings, and barns atop subterranean layers of disparate, sometimes unrelated material and mysterious cavities. These incongruous structures include Sub Comfort, a rickety house with TV and mattress in the basement. In The Bilder, a majestic old barn sits atop the skeletal frame of a wooden galleon. Brush Park situates a boarded-up and crumbling brick edifice above a subterranean cave with access to a body of water. Painted in cross-section like natural history specimens—each building and its lower regions isolated against a pristine field of white paper- these structures have the feel of old teeth, worn down with the rotting network of root, gum, and bone exposed. Their clinical beauty and uncanny combinations make their poignancy not only palatable but also strangely beguiling.

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Schedule

from February 13, 2010 to March 13, 2010

Opening Reception on 2010-02-13 from 18:00 to 21:00

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