It’s a Small World

Artists Gabrielle de Montmollin and Melanie MacDonald both make art from found objects. In doing so, they perform acts of mise en abyme, stories told within stories. Their work also reflects on materialism and class, our instinctive drive to collect, and the multiplicity of meanings that common objects hold.

Both Montmollin and MacDonald’s accomplishments, as a photographer and a painter respectively, are intrinsically linked to their masterful use of colour. Their colours tantalize us, harmonizing and pulling things into spinning orbit and contrasting and bouncing off one another like welder’s sparks. This exhibit is as vivid as a confectionery pushing just shy of psychedelic.

It may be a small world, but it is infinite if we choose to see the distinctiveness of the things in it. This is what art is best at, finding new frequencies that enable us to perceive what’s hidden in plain sight, lifting the veil. These artists remind us that another reality is already there, it’s up to us to change our perceptions and see it.

View the paintings on Melanie MacDonald’s web site

View the photographs on Gabrielle de Montmollin’s web site

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