LANDON MACKENZIE "Nervous Centre," September 7, 2012 to January 5, 2013, Esker Foundation, Calgary

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"Nervous Centre"

Landon Mackenzie, "Nervous Centre," installation shot. Courtesy Esker Foundation. Photo: Christian Grandjean.

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"Nervous Centre"

Landon Mackenzie, "Nervous Centre," installation shot. Courtesy Esker Foundation. Photo: Christian Grandjean.

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"Nervous Centre"

Landon Mackenzie, "Nervous Centre," installation shot. Courtesy Esker Foundation. Photo: Christian Grandjean.

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"Nervous Centre"

Landon Mackenzie, "Nervous Centre," installation with Interior Lowlands (Still the Restless Whispers Never leave Me) from the collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, and Spin. . .I Sing as if No One Can Hear me (Saskatchewan). Courtesy Esker Foundation. Photo: Christian Grandjean.

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SITE Photo, Massey

"Electric Scaffold (Berlin series)"

Landon Mackenzie, "Electric Scaffold (Berlin series)," 2007, watercolour, ink, and gesso on acid free paper, 19.3” x 25.5” Photo: Scott Massey.

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"Neurocity (Aqua Blue)"

Landon Mackenzie, "Neurocity (Aqua Blue)," 2010, synthetic polymer on linen, 86.2” x 121.3” Courtesy of the artist and Art 45, Montréal. Photo: Scott Massey.

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"Night Sky and Blue Moon"

Landon Mackenzie, "Night Sky and Blue Moon," 2009, oil on linen, 82.7” x 114.2”. Courtesy of the artist and Art 45, Montréal. Photo: Scott Massey.

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"Point of Entry (Ice Track)"

Landon Mackenzie, "Point of Entry (Ice Track)," 2008-2009, oil on linen, 86.6” x 114.2” Courtesy of the artist and Art 45, Montréal. Photo: Scott Massey.

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"World of Knots and Troubles"

Landon Mackenzie, "World of Knots and Troubles," 2006, synthetic polymer on linen, 86.2” x 121.3” Prout - Lara Collection, Vancouver. Photo: Scott Massey.

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"Circle of Willis"

Landon Mackenzie, "Circle of Willis," 2006, synthetic polymer on linen, 86.2” x 121.3” Courtesy of the artist and Art 45, Montréal. Photo: Scott Massey.

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LANDON MACKENZIE: Nervous Centre

September 7, 2012 to January 5, 2013

Esker Foundation, Calgary

By Thomas E. Hardy

Vancouver-based painter Landon Mackenzie’s work is diverse. The surprisingly varied look of individual pieces in this survey of two decades of abstract painting and drawing represents well her central theme of movement. Maps, charts, scans and systems bind her explorations but also liberate them. Her work is deeply physical yet intellectually observant.

As Mackenzie says in a notebook entry displayed in the show, she thinks through her fingers. Her vast paintings are almost hands-on workshops that make only passing references to rational understandings. In essence, her content is visual articulation – ranging from the heavy and dense to the energetic kinesis of activated surfaces. The mind cooperates in the production of meaning, but does not control it. These are stories of the body.

Although Mackenzie’s paintings are often initiated by graphic systems such as the geographic maps of her Saskatchewan series, they remain active. Circle Of Willis is one of the most restless. Its title refers to a network of arteries that supply blood to the brain, a rich opportunity for wild fiction that results in a sprawling mass of webbing, splotches, doodles and quirky marks cast over the underlying pink and viscous brain. An attempt to control this mad comedy by superimposing an emblematic motif of metaphorical order – a mesh of ladders – is a great instigation. It encourages the sensual comprehension of an intellectual concept, a stunning irony.

Neurocity (Aqua Blue) could be by a different artist, illustrating that Mackenzie’s painting is not primarily an engagement with the medium. Here she refers to the thrust of perception broken into interactive pixilated elements. These digital components seek out the viewer. They connect rather than confound. This painting stands in contrast to the pixilated work of Gerhard Richter, for whom contestations in the medium seem primary.

Mackenzie notes that she changes her lens as time and circumstances alter. In earlier work from the Saskatchewan, Athabasca and Houbart’s Hope series, canvases are saturated with histories of lost territories and colonization. A heavy mixture of grief and compromised wonder often seizes them. But 10 years later, works like Point Of Entry (Ice Tracks) have a different lens. The eye is seduced to travel through space and celebrate uncontested motion. It’s an imagined future of liberation where a dazzling orchestration of flash and colour converges at the centre of the canvas. Five large paintings have individual soundtracks by composer Dennis Burke. Heard through headphones, they trigger cinematic sensations as sound melds with visual space.

Mackenzie charts the play at the heart of life where imaginative forces move in ways both coerced and untrammeled. This is engaging and generous painting that keeps our eyes open.