Peter MacCallum has been dealing with object-oriented ontology since well before anyone ever coined such a phrase. He is a human camera, assiduously documenting things – stores, concrete factories, the street – in the world (but mostly Toronto) for decades and doing the utmost to erase himself in the process. There is only ever the faintest whiff of expression in his black and white (but mostly grey) photographs, which is all the better to leave the air free for cold hard truth. 
Peter MacCallum, Skyline Series, From 20 Vanauley Street, Sixth Floor, May 1991, 1991, silver print from film negative
But the truth in his Skyline Series, now on view at Diaz Contemporary (but closing on Saturday, so get down there now!), is neither cold nor hard nor certain. You don't have to go back to the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus (he of the metaphysics of flux) to know that everything changes. MacCallum makes it counterintuitively clear through the rigorous attempt to keep his subject steady. Eleven pictures of the same cityscape from the same angle from the same position (and three earlier ones of roughly the same scene taken from a different vantage point) make for the most perverse exhibition I've seen in a while. It presents itself as the refusal of novelty in the embrace of vision. Within its account of the changing (and not changing) horizon of the downtown core, it documents the pursuit of a different kind of truth, one that has to do with sustaining a practice of observation. MacCallum is an empirical purist relaying the objective truth of what's out there. 
Gordon Peterson, NN-01, oil on canvas, 2011/2013
Paired with the series of photographs of the same thing are a series of paintings of the same thing by Gordon Peterson. I like things I don't understand and just as MacCallum confounds me in his directness, these paintings are a good example of an artist (and then a critic) responding to a giddy “Why?” (or better said, “Why not?). These earthy abstractions look like things – bannisters, vines, drapery, or degraded daguerreotypes – that have moldered in a wet basement. They flicker in and out as figure and ground refuse to resolve. They resist direct viewing, seeming to play with the light as would a reflective surface. They ain't pretty and some feel unfinished, but that instability is what holds your gaze. There is no high contrast or dramatic gesture or energy as associated with action pairing; in fact, they all seem weighed down by gravity, tendrils dragging to the bottom of the frame and the colour scheme washed and bleached and muddied until grey. I've begun to class paintings by the type of person I imagine living with one. A sort of interior design crossed with psychotherapy. These intense, complex, not show-offy, determined canvases deserve their equal.
Diaz Contemporary: http://www.diazcontemporary.ca/
Peter MacCallum: Skyline Series, 1979-1992 continues until January 16.
Gordon Peterson: The Next Next continues until January 16.
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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Peter MacCallum & Gordon Peterson at Diaz Contemporary
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