Brett Eduardz at Zalucky Contemporary

Artist: Brett Eduardz

Exhibition title: Within the Limits of the Fable

Venue: Zalucky Contemporary, Toronto, Canada

Date: November 2 – December 23, 2023

Photography: Em Moor / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Zalucky Contemporary

Brett Eduardz bathes his paintings. In an oversized basin in th e middle of his studio in Montreal, he soaks the canvas to prepare it for pigment. The sides are splattered with remnants of paintings past, like a Jackson Pollock. But they lack the frantic energy of Pollock’s paintings. They’re more reminiscent of works by other artists from that same era – Helen Frankenthaller’s pouring of paint, Joan Miró’s wandering line drawings, and Morris Louis’s bleeding edges. Their gestures are the common denominator—confident yet loose, but always searching. Like a sculptor chipping away at marble to reveal a bust, abstraction is about manifesting something visual from nothing. In doing so, abstract art depicts the unknowable. It also invites us to reflect on our own lived experience and personal memories.

Subtle scenes emerge in Eduardz’s works. A vase with flowers in the corner of a composition appears like a mirage: there’s the sense of a fog clearing and a scene showing itself. The overall obscurity of the paintings is speckled with instances of clarity. It’s an apt metaphor for memory – we remember the slight outlines of things, the feeling of being in a moment, but a complete picture remains frustratingly out of reach.

Abstraction is to be comfortable with ambiguity, with listening rather than telling. That is the path that Eduardz guides the viewer towards: a moment of reflection on what we remember and accepting things we cannot know or see. The planes of water that move paint around, starting and stopping abruptly, are like a causeway on a map. We project ourselves into these paintings, seeing images from our past and drawing them into the present. We do so to remain with them there, even if for a moment.

– Tatum Dooley

Brett Eduardz is an emerging Montréal-based artist currently working in collage, painting, and video. His practice is informed by a sense of wonder and a desire to distill the fleeting moments of everyday life. Recent exhibitions include House of Mirrors with Sofia Eleni Escobar at The Plumb, Toronto, ON (2023), Omnikron Edition curated by Ralf Kokke at Tinimini Room, Dordrecht, NL (2022), and several video installations including Sliding Doors at Feast in the East, Toronto, ON (2017), Brick Works for Luminato Festival at The Hearn, Toronto, ON (2016), and Between Lines for Long Winter Vol. 4.3 at 99 Sudbury, Toronto, ON (2016). He holds a Bachelor of Design from OCAD University.