Diaz Contemporary announces A Good Play, an exhibition of new paintings by Elizabeth McIntosh. For the past 17 years, McIntosh has made paintings that are concerned with the repetition of basic forms. McIntosh’s new paintings are bolder but not without the underlying complexity of earlier works. They demonstrate her interest in improvisation and the making of painting into a deliberately undefined journey.
“It is precisely the initial challenge, joy, absurdity and potential gonzo humour (think Klee) of these ungrounded experiments in abstraction that McIntosh brings back by daring to tentatively be boldly abstract. The decisive difference, however, is that she does so unapologetically, without pretending to lay down laws, recognizing instead the full potential of abstraction in its principle of ungroundedness.”
- Jan Verwoert
The title of the show is taken from a children’s poem by R.L. Stevenson, and relates to the adventurous and optimistic early days of abstraction. In a complex engagement with the history of painting, McIntosh emphasizes a spirit of openness and continuation. Her method speaks to the idea that aesthetic development does not have a beginning or an end, but is rather eternally renewing itself. The decisions she makes are formed through a process, and the resulting works have their own internal logic that varies from painting to painting thereby resisting a single strategy.
Vancouver-based Elizabeth McIntosh has exhibited nationally and internationally. She has had recent solo exhibitions at Goodwater (Cut Out) in Toronto, Blanket Contemporary Art Inc. in Vancouver and Parisian Laundry in Montreal. Group exhibitions include The Path of Most Resistance at OCAD Professional Gallery in Toronto, Enacting Abstraction at the Vancouver Art Gallery, PAINT at the Vancouver Art Gallery, and Superfudge at the Balmoral in Los Angeles. She will also be featured this year in a solo show at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver. McIntosh is the recipient of a number of grants and awards. She is currently an Associate Professor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Her catalogue, also titled A Good Play, an artist monograph with essays by Jan Verwoert and Monika Szewczyk, was published in 2010 by Emily Carr University Press and will be launched publicly during the opening of her exhibition.
 
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