ERIN MCSAVANEY, VANCOUVER...

In his artist´s statement, McSavaney cites his subject -architecture-and asserts that it embodies the social, political, and economic values of its age. Here, his seven acrylic paintings depict warehouses, factories, and loading bays in south Vancouver. Many of these structures are viewed at night, from back alleys or at the far edge of an expanse of bare asphalt. Even the day-bright images possess an air of nighttime abandonment:

shadows are ominous, the sky is an apocalyptic blue, and no cars, trucks, or people animate these scenes.

Most of Mc Savaney works are in "Panavision" format, signalling their relationship to photography. Althought they are realistic in style, they also evoke the recent histories of geometric abstraction and hard-edge painting, through their formal focus and straight lines and intersecting planes.

Here and throughout the series, McSavaney reminds us that the mostly anonymous and sometimes abandoned buildings he decipts are bound into an economy of production and distribution. Althought far more understated than shopping malls, supermarkets, and big box stores, they skill marketplace-the postcolonial church of overconsumption.

http://www.erinmcsavaney.com/