Gerda Wekerle Statement
Disruptive Skylines
CELL GALLERY
Reception April 11, 2024 6:30 PM
Artists have portrayed the built form and evolving skylines of cities for generations, e.g. Robert Delaunay’s fractured paintings of the newly built Eiffel Tower. My recent paintings of Toronto’s rapidly changing skyline follows this tradition. Due to the large number of construction cranes visible at one time, Toronto has been dubbed the construction crane capital of the world. Yet, these dominant but transitory mechanical structures are taken for granted.
My paintings of Toronto’s machinery of tall building construction-cranes and pile drivers-interrogate the process of transforming familiar landscapes of traditional buildings and neighbourhoods with ever-higher modernist structures. I aim to challenge the taken-for granted by combining abstraction and representation that highlight the interplay of shapes, lines, and textures. The paintings are ambiguous. Some may view them as a celebration of the city’s growth. For others. they are a critique of global capital and the loss of human scale and nature.
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