Influenced by the history of William Morris as designer, poet and essayist, David Mabb reinterprets Morris’ textiles to investigate political and artistic traditions. Morris (1834-96), a socialist and advocate of creativity and craft, contradicted artisan values by mass-producing textiles. Once considered radical, his designs evolved to embody good taste, respectability and nostalgia, and eventually adorned many wealthy interiors. In an ironic turn, later use by the English middle class depleted their value, subsuming them to reduced commodities of industry.

Mabb’s artistic practice heightens the evolution of Morris’ design. Using Morris textiles as his ground, he adorns them with images of industrialization: Monet’s rendition of the Gare St. Lazare, genre paintings by the Russian Avant-Garde and photos of machinery all depict an unconditional belief in the possibilities of modernism. Mabb strategically conceals Morris’ craft with paint, allowing elements of the design to peek through and claim a dialogue with his embellishments, thus re-evaluating the idealism of prosperity and ingenuity. His choice of exploration through painting affirms the visible — the physical world — enabling the viewer to witness it clearly and concisely. Mabb spares Morris from merely existing within the realm of consumerism by reclaiming his designs as the property of utopian modernism, re-emphasizing ‘artisanship over the alienated labour of industrial production’. The original charge that ignited the modern art movement is rekindled, it’s dreams redeemed.

Aptly identifying kinship with the digital age in his newest exhibition, California (Part 2), Chris Dorosz uses technology as fodder for modifying traditional painting into new forms and functions. He replaces the threads (of a canvas) with clear, thin, plastic rods to give the impression that drops of paint cling to them, suspended in space, creating not only the flesh of the painting but the meat of the form as well. Chris Dorosz paints in the round. He creates depth of field rather than simply alludes to it, and uses the paint drop to give form — inherent in its viscosity — instead of relying on illusion. His innovative use of paint pushes the medium to its most “virtual” application, resulting in a cluster of paint-drops that pop with tantalizing energy and colour.

Dorosz poses the figures in his paintings in ways reminiscent of the digital animation upon which he draws. He imbues them with humour and sadness while emphasizing their isolation, whether the scenario be one of family members in “Sidnea and her Daughter,” strangers in “sleeping dancer”, or god and prayer in “g-spot after ribera.” In this way, his methodology colludes with the formal and metaphorical properties of his figures to accentuate a feeling of animate entrapment. Locked within the grid of plastic rods, the figures appear halted in a vertical torrent of pixels, virtually incarnate yet deeply grounded in their physicality.