Tristan Unrau at Towards

Artist: Tristan Unrau

Exhibition title: 50 Million Years

Venue: Towards, Toronto, Canada

Date: September 10 – October 10, 2020

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Towards, Toronto

Towards is pleased to present 50 Million Years, a solo exhibition of new work by Tristan Unrau. ~~~~

12 new paintings with no overriding central motivations. Except, of course, the motivations that squeeze through the vicissitudes of the day. The motivations that scream, “notice this! notice that!” And are made out of the qualities that we associate with love: curiosity, playfulness, lust, and sorrow.

The motivations, turned into paintings, produce a game of associative thinking. Psychologists no longer think of the mind as going through a sequence of conscious ideas, one at a time. They suspect quite a lot happens at once. An idea that has been activated does not merely evoke one other idea. It activates many ideas, which in turn activate others. Only a few of the activated ideas will register in consciousness; most of the work of associative thinking is silent, hidden from our conscious selves. The notion that we have limited access to the workings of our minds is difficult to accept because, naturally, it is alien to our experience, but it is true; you know far less about yourself than you feel you do.1

1.Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015.