Nature of Description

By Erica Eades, Staff Contributor

Just inside the Eyelevel Gallery entrance at 2063 Gottingen St., there is an immediate scent of fresh paint. The harsh, white walls are adorned with a series of vivid paintings, which surround a single photograph in the centre of the room. An old projector displays a silent film on the front wall, while a television screen in the back is frozen on an image of a teenage girl.
Nature of Descriptions is the latest exhibit by Halifax-based artist, Aaron Weldon MacLean. The collection was inspired by a photo found in the archives of his late father. It shows a family-planning class at Tantallon Junior High School in the early 1990s. In the photo are about 25 students, a teacher, an infant, and the infant’s mother.
With the help of a small group of local artists and performers, MacLean re-enacted the class in the form of a silent film. The film portrays a teacher instructing her students on the basics of childcare. It is set to play on a continuous loop, while being projected on the front wall of the gallery.
The exhibit also features a series of four paintings by the artist. They depict a woman holding a baby, a profile of a female student, an infant in a small tub and a class picture.
On the Eyelevel Gallery website, MacLean says of his work: “I have tended to employ different modes of painting that imply photography or collage, hiding representation with geometrical shapes and referring to disparate modes of picture-making through paint.”
True to this idea, MacLean’s paintings feature abstract images that are combined with details so precise, they could be photographs. The bodies and backgrounds blur together in a collage of vibrant colours, while the faces of the characters are frighteningly realistic.
MacLean has also painted large, light-blue boxes on the walls and floor of the gallery. While some remain blank, others have somewhat cryptic text written in them, such as “imprint”, “fruit tree” and “forgetfulness”.
MacLean, who has shown his work internationally, has a very clear vision for this exhibit. As he says on the gallery website: “My intention with this project is to use visual inheritance as a point of departure in exploring the relationship between formal aspects of images and their historical or informational content.”