Abstract Paintings I-XII (The Financial District)

Abstract Paintings I – XII (The Financial District) (2010) is at once an ode to history painting and a meditation on the monumentality of corporate architecture. Conflating the traditions of monochrome painting with that of street photography, Ian Wallace abstracts the intersection of Wellington and Bay Streets in downtown Toronto into pure gridded forms that inspire a sense of majesty and awe, but also that of vertigo and disorientation, drawing attention to our general disconnection from the financial activities that take place within these towers of glass and steel. Wallace states, “when we view the city from the actuality of the streets, the logic of its economic reality is not directly available to representation, and we are left primarily with the impression of its pictorial grandeur, its effect as the sublime and the spectacular.”