Exhibitions
Yves Gaucher: Transitions
Frances K. Smith Gallery
28 February - 21 June
In the winter of 1967, following several months of preparation in which he made hundreds of graphite sketches, Yves Gaucher produced a folio of eight lithographs entitled Transitions. This culmination of months’ work is widely regarded as the most concise formal statement of his career to that point. These eight prints mark a turning point in his practice, a synthesis of ideas that would lead directly to his Grey on Grey paintings, the series that would establish Gaucher’s status as one of the foremost abstract artists of his generation.
Employing his signature style of radically reduced means and an acute sense of rhythm and structure, the Transitions prints are made up of deceptively simple, narrow horizontal lines, or signals, in closely related values of grey, carefully arrayed on a field of white paper. While each has its own logic and integrity, when viewed as a whole they yield a sense of duration marked by subtle shifts of perception, a narrative of discretely placed visual cues moving from symmetry to asymmetry. The extremely subtle relationships of figure and ground propel the prints toward dematerialization, demanding of the viewer an exceptionally intense awareness. So close to disappearing are these works that they stubbornly resist photographic reproduction, a quality common to much of Gaucher’s work and one which marks this exhibition as a rare opportunity to experience his work as he intended.
The significance of the Transitions folio was confirmed in the Grey on Grey paintings that immediately followed. The Art Centre is fortunate to hold a prime example from this series, M-O/69, which is included in this exhibition both to complement the prints and to give a deeper sense of their achievement.
Scott Wallis