RUTH ADLER

Decade Show at the Koffler
Febuary 22 - May 10, 2024,
Koffler Gallery, Toronto, Canada

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Ruth Adler is a multidisciplinary artist who works with paint, fabric, assemblage and collage, and video, and has been exhibiting internationally since the 1980s. Although fabric and textile are the basis of her recent work, she refers to herself as a painter. Certainly, she applies paint to the surfaces of cut or torn fabric, and the images do initially read as paintings for their exuberant use of colour and bold, lyrical compositions, characteristics most closely associated with painting. Her process is also similar to many painters, as she prefers to work intuitively and allows painted areas and brushstrokes to be direct and evident, heightening the visceral and emotional impact. Fabrics and fragments often overlap creating collage-like surfaces and complex visual fields. Sometimes clashing patterns and motifs result in jarring visual effects that might harmonize and articulate certain shapes and forms, and contradict and disrupt others, resulting in powerful perceptual experience. Her work in DECADE features a series of single-panel textile paintings, and a fabric collage/assemblage created in situ during the installation of the exhibition. Titles and sometimes the images themselves may refer to or be inspired by figures, landscapes, and potential narratives but the work is largely abstract emphasizing the focussed act of looking and seeing.   

 

David Liss 
Toronto 2024