It wasn’t until I was four paintings into her solo exhibition at Jessica Bradley Gallery that I started to get Sarah Cale. And since I’m the type of critic who eschews textual support on the first go-around, it wasn’t until later, when I read the title for the fourth painting, that I realized how synchronous our thinking – Cale’s and mine, that is – was, or rather, is. The title is Separated at Birth and the painting – insofar as you can call these wall-hung objects “paintings” (perhaps “paintings plus” is more appropriate) – is comprised of your standard rectangularly-mounted canvas (in this case, stretched linen) with an additional loose piece of rectangular linen slightly offset from the square attached to the surface. The result of this simple enough gesture is to skew the formal requirements of a painting slightly off the square as well and in doing so set in motion a series of reflections on the twinning of form and content, which are inescapably both separated and united at birth. 
Sarah Cale, Low Rent Oracle (detail), 2012-15, oil and unravelled linen on linen
While I’ll leave my extended riff on the novelty of formal innovation in the last century of visual art to be collected in my scholarly papers, I will mention that Cale’s playful creations manage to make the serious work of transcendence and abstraction in the field of painting surprisingly fun. From her lengthy exhibition title (see below) to the religiously infused, but not obsessed, titles of her individual works, Cale manages to put the “reverence” back in “irreverence” while avoiding the temptation to play either the clown or the high priest. The laughter that the exhibition elicited was not a chuckle or a guffaw, but the “ha!” of recognition and delight. This often came after my initial assessment had been established, only to be undercut by colourful details that set the work back into motion. For example, Low Rent Oracle is a portrait-sized work on an oval canvas with a full head of unravelled linen hair hanging from face-level past the bottom of the frame. This would be a sufficient experiment on its own, but if you look closely at those split ends you’ll find they’ve been dipped in pink paint. And on further inspection, the hairline is also imbued with far brighter colours than previously assessed. And then a whole bunch of hidden colours reveal themselves throughout the previously thought to be limited exhibition palette. Which leads me back to the theme of spirituality and the quick conclusion that God continues to be found in the details. 
Silke Otto-Knap, Figure (bending), 2007, watercolour on canvas
The week that Cale’s exhibition closes also happens to be the week that Silke Otto-Knapp, another contemporary artist beating the dead horse of painting, officially opens her solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario. The works have been up since mid-February, but the artist will be giving a talk as well as present a hula performance by a Hawaiian dance team on Wednesday in the gallery, followed by the public opening. After having put in my best effort at appreciating the art on display, I must admit that the hula thing is the most intriguing aspect of this exhibition. The paintings are uniformly indistinct in appearance. They resemble overexposed negatives or washed out watercolours, and depict dancing figures, barren landscapes or culturally specific scenes (the set of a play, for example). The contents acquire an air of mystery or significance through the purposefully obscure method of putting paint to canvas. It reminds me of a conversation from years ago when I was still playing the field. Someone flirting with me asked why my responses were so cryptic and I had to confess that it made me sound more interesting than I was. These paintings fall victim to the same conceit.
Jessica Bradley Gallery: http://jessicabradleyinc.com/
Sarah Cale: My Religion Makes No Sense and Does Not Help Me Therefore I Pursue It continues until March 21.
Art Gallery of Ontario: http://www.ago.net/silke-otto-knapp-land-lies-in-water
Silke Otto-Knapp: Land lies in water continues to July 19.
Terence Dick is a freelance writer living in Toronto. His art criticism has appeared in Canadian Art, BorderCrossings, Prefix Photo, Camera Austria, Fuse, Mix, C Magazine, Azure, and The Globe and Mail. He is the editor of Akimblog. You can follow his quickie reviews and art news announcements on Twitter @TerenceDick.
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Sarah Cale at Jessica Bradley | Silke Otto-Knapp at the Art Gallery of Ontario
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