'Ozone Gleaners' by Tiziana La Melia and geetha thurairajah at Projet Pangée, Montreal

Montreal, December 18, 2019 — Projet Pangée is proud to present Ozone Gleaners, an exhibition uniting the works of Tiziana La Melia (Vancouver) and geetha thurairajah (Brooklyn and Toronto). Through paintings and installation, both artists consider and unsettle conventions in painting addressing how histories are recoded and inverted. An incongruous, effervescent palette pervades the pictures: porous ocher, blue Monday and ultraviolet gather in a layered, ambiguous pictorial space to describe the irreconcilable forms from within interiors that are the surface and location for the uninvited. 

For Tiziana La Melia, the house diagram becomes ascribe that not only marks the boundary of the unwelcome guest but defines it and allows it to be seen. The simple life becomes a substitute for abstraction and a way for the rural to find its way into the picture by reworking the autobiographical with an Aesop fable, taking place under gabled roofs. With the paintings of geetha thurairajah, the surface of the cave wall conflates with the screen becoming a liminal surface where seemingly irreconcilable referents connect through atemporal narrative. How are origin stories authored and who is left dis/possessed of power once they are written? These are questions thurairajah asks when examining how language can influence hierarchical representations within culture at large. In Ozone Gleaners, the potentiality of “alien” shadows become placeholders for misguided perceptions.