12 July to 02 August 2008

Working Title: Monique Mouton, Sally Spath & Mina Totino
Curated by: Elizabeth McIntosh

Diaz Contemporary is pleased to present the works of Monique Mouton, Sally Späth and Mina Totino in an exhibition curated by Elizabeth McIntosh.

Working Title explores the ways in which these artists deal with the matter of painting. The elements with which the paintings are composed - including the size and direction of the brush marks, the visible layers of colour, the viscosity of the paint, the negotiation of the edges and the idiosyncrasies of format – are the subject of the work. This focus on the parameters of painting itself is a modernist paradigm; however, the alliance to modernism falls short upon examining the end result of their works. Rather than being abstract these paintings are factual. Each of the artists work in ways that use those modernist constructs and yet each distort these constructs by the way the paint is considered, worked with and thought about. The transparency of the surface is quite literal in each of their methods, however, the labour of their thought and the results in paint demand a durational response.

McIntosh has known Sally Späth and followed her work since 1992 when they formed the Toronto collective “Painting Disorders”. Mina Totino and McIntosh have had regular conversations about painting and have exchanged studio visits since McIntosh moved to Vancouver in 2004. Monique Mouton was a student at Emily Carr where McIntosh is currently teaching.