The Subject is Colour | Rhys Douglas Farrell and Marcia Harris

The Subject is Colour

Rhys Douglas Farrell + Marcia Harris

April 20 – May 11, 2024

The Subject is Colour

Rhys Douglas Farrell + Marcia Harris

Contributing Curator, Ryan Doherty

A collaboration between Herringer Kiss Gallery and Loch Gallery, these exhibitions have been supported by local collector, Tony Hailu.

Cover: Marcia Harris, King Eddie (detail), 2024

Opposite: Rhys Douglas Farrell, Morrows Monolith, 2024

Following spread: Rhys Douglas Farrell

The Subject is Colour

Ryan Doherty

An exhibition bringing together Rhys Douglas Farrell and Marcia Harris may, at a glance, appear to be an unexpected pairing. The former is a minimalist who builds layers of precise and eye-bending patterns, and the latter is a realist conjuring painterly evocations of familiar urban landmarks. Deeper reflection, however, unveils several shared characteristics, most notably their similarly emphatic and practised approach to employing colour.

Rhys Douglas Farrell’s work is steeped in colour. He draws upon a massive legacy of colourists and hard-edge painters from the de Stijl movement of Mondrian, early minimalists like Ellsworth Kelly and Frank Stella, Op artists such as Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely, and from Canada, Guido Molinari, Rita Letendre, and Calgary’s

own, Harry Kiyooka. Masters of colour, pattern, and optical play, their works serve as critical points of departure for Farrell, whose growing collection of murals, panels, and sculptures pulsate with visceral combinations of coloured lines, dots, and geometric invention.

Farrell is similarly inspired by the principles posited by chemist, Michel Eugène Chevreul (1839), who noted the mesmerizing effects of simultaneous contrast. This phenomenon is evident in Farrell’s sympathetic and studied application of colours, which, when juxtaposed, undergo a transformative shift, engaging the viewer in an optical dance. Farrell treads carefully here, balancing intense contrast with intuitive subtlety by experimenting with colours all over the wheel.

Credit, too, must be given to Josef Albers, whose 1963 book, Interactions of Color, continues to prove invaluable to Farrell. Acutely aware of the slippery nature of colour, Albers writes on the first page, “In visual perception a color is almost never seen as it really is—as it physically is. This fact makes color the most relative medium in art. In order to use color effectively it is necessary to recognize that color deceives continually.”

Farrell’s nuanced explorations of colour and pattern become increasingly complex when they make the leap into threedimensional space. His recent sculptures pare down details of previous works that are cut out, blown up, folded, and curved into unassuming geometric forms.

Consider his new work, Silent Strides. Circling the sculpture, the viewer can

observe an unassuming ribbon striped with blue, pink, and grey tones in myriad variations that overlap and intersect. Any sense of the selected hues, tones, or tints as static is revealed as an illusion, the colours shifting in the play of light and shadow. Farrell’s seemingly rudimentary architectural forms present their complexity through deliberate attention, and if you are not yet bewildered, position multiple sculptures together and the interplay becomes almost kaleidoscopic.

This serves as a fitting moment to reflect on the paintings of Marcia Harris. An exploration of architectural forms is of unmistakable interest to Harris, as evidenced by her catalogue of renowned, even notorious, buildings in familiar urban landscapes. Her methodical application of colour balances theory

Rhys Douglas Farrell, Silent Strides, 2024

and practice while emphasizing the potent impact of layering light and shadow. Harris looks to her own pedigreed list of influences, which includes Impressionists from Manet to Morisot, and contemporary masters such as George Shaw, Adrian Ghenie, and David Hockney, all widely celebrated for their command of light.

For Harris, painting is a playful yet deliberate endeavour, where she revels in the unpredictability of colour interactions and embraces the beauty of unresolved moments. Her choice of subject is largely motivated by colour, light, and shadow, and by the distinctive ways these might harmonize or disrupt.

Her process begins with unplanned and uninhibited underpainting, typically with generous strokes of mid-tone greens and oranges, but just as often spraypainted in neon colours evoking graffiti. Harris then builds her compositions layer by layer, allowing each decision to inform the next in a continuous chain of creative evolution. Like Farrell, her choices derive from an unwavering faith in spontaneity and intuition, yet are informed by a theoretical grounding of colour, again through the likes of Albers, but also Yale scholar David Scott Kastan’s landmark 2018 book, On Color.

Harris is keenly aware that “overplanning leads to disappointment” and

Rhys Douglas Farrell, Aura of Incandescence, 2024 Opposite: Marcia Harris, Fortuna, 2023

Marcia Harris, Chicken Dinner, 2024

Previous spread: Marcia Harris, Thursday (left) and super store (right), 2024

Opposite: Marcia Harris, Today’s Special, 2023

instead allows her works to emerge with energy and dynamism. She expresses vitality through a distinct use of colour, light, surface, and composition, provoking an alternative perception of familiar urban spaces. Recently, Harris has pushed this condition further, leaving the stark “solitude of a building” and entering the interior spaces to observe its occupants. Among her newest paintings, super store features a typical day at Luke’s Drug Mart.

It is a superlative example of a lively interior, both in its painterly approach,

palette, and composition, and its bubbling social atmosphere.

The Subject is Colour underscores both artists’ shared fascination with viewer experience and the transformative power of colour in space—depicted or otherwise. Whether an optically hypnotic abstraction or an alluring depiction of the urban spaces we inhabit, the artists deftly navigate the intricate interplay of hues, tones, light, and shadow to produce works that stimulate and seduce.

Works in Exhibition

Marcia Harris

King Eddie, 2024

oil, acrylic and aerosol on panel 30” x 40”

Fortuna, 2023

oil, acrylic and aerosol on panel 48” x 36”

Thursday, 2024

oil, acrylic and aerosol on canvas 60” x 48”

super store, 2024

oil, acrylic and aerosol on canvas 60” x 72”

Today’s Special, 2023

oil, acrylic and aerosol on panel 60” x 48”

Chicken Dinner, 2024

oil, acrylic and aerosol on panel 40” x 40”

Marcia Harris, Hero, 2024

Opposite: Marcia Harris, Glory, 2024

Glory, 2024

oil, acrylic and aerosol on panel

36” x 40”

Villain, 2024

oil, acrylic and aerosol on panel 30” x 24”

Hero, 2024

oil, acrylic and aerosol on panel 30” x 24”

Lang’s, 2024

oil, acrylic and aerosol on panel 48” x 48”

Works in Exhibition

Rhys Douglas Farrell

Morrows Monolith, 2024

acrylic and aerosol on aluminum composite, 40” x 24” x 12”

Silent Strides, 2024

acrylic and aerosol on aluminum composite, 18” x 12” x 84”

Aura of Incandescence, 2024

acrylic and aerosol on panel 48” diameter

Aura of Effulgence, 2024

acrylic and aerosol on panel 48” diameter

The Curvature of Courtship, 2024

acrylic and aerosol on aluminum composite, 36” x 36” x 24”

Tunnel Vision, 2024

acrylic and aerosol on aluminum composite, 48” x 48” x 40”

The Director, 2024

Last On the Left, 2024

acrylic and aerosol on aluminum composite, 84” x18” x 12”

Rhys Douglas Farrell, Tunnel Vision, 2024

Opposite: Rhys Douglas Farrell, The Curvature of Courtship, 2024

Back cover: Rhys Douglas Farrell, Aura of Effulgence, 2024

acrylic and aerosol on aluminum composite, 84” x 24” x 20”