REFERENCE: CONTEMPORARY
TORONTO, CANADA

reference: contemporary

reference: contemporary is a Toronto-based gallery that champions artists focusing on abstraction. Founded by Maita Sayo in 2015, the gallery has a focused international program and has participated in more than a dozen art fairs in New York and Miami. Located in the west end of Toronto, the gallery is a five-minute drive from the Museum of Contemporary Art.

For VOLTA New York 2022, reference: contemporary will be exhibiting a new series of paintings by Kal Mansur. Entitled Land Escapes, several thick impasto layers of paint applied with a palette knife are washed over with translucent glazes. Colors are built then subdued into a monochromatic mass. Circular resin sculptures inundate the works with changing reflections. These paintings start to bloom as one walks around them. What were once muted circles begin to gleam – they are beacons that turn off and on. The surfaces are contradictory: waxy yet reflective, the circles both mirror and obscure the viewer. Here Mansur mines the possibilities within abstraction, making a case for its plural nature by creating potent modes of interference in painting.