Christie Contemporary is very pleased to present the work of Kelly Wallace. 

When a framed drawing is hung on a wall, it is a two-dimensional rendering. When that same drawing is placed horizontally on a flat surface, it demonstrates potential as sculpture. A drawing on a dimensional form complicates and interrogates both endeavours, as perspective materializes in both inner space and a volume in projection. For Wallace, whose dense, graphite drawings typically comprise several kilometres’ worth of vertical lines to coax perspectival  imagery on the picture plane, it proved irresistible territory. The three small, rhomboid drawings presented in this exhibition are feats of exquisite compression, with both container and contained — object and image  — resembling each other in echo: a square dislocated from its cubic perfection in a way that suggests movement, a pathway, a change of state. The drawn shape, repeated and contorted, articulated from within the thicket of drawing is conceived as representing the last bits of civilization, perhaps rendering the form not so much container as vault.

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The shape of the box and the shapes drawn on the box have a similar source shape. Each drawing was a means for me to mark out the problematic thresholds about drawing, making them tangible and at the same time a highly resolved proposition. The drawn shapes are as much about what they signify as what they do not describe.

— Kelly Wallace

KELLY WALLACE  (b. 1968) earned his BFA from University of Guelph in 1993. His work has been featured in several regional, national and international exhibitions, such as A Quarter Century of Collecting, Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton, ON (2019); Drawing the Beginning of Everything, AKG Museum, Buffalo, NY (2017); Out of Line, Oakville Galleries, Oakville, ON (2015); and Imaging Disaster, Museum London, London, ON (2013). His work is held in numerous private, corporate and public collections in Canada and internationally, including Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton; Museum London, London; AKG Museum, Buffalo; and Bank of Montreal, Toronto.