Dil Hildebrand‘s current exhibition at Pierre-François Ouellette Art Contemporain titled Back to the Drawing Board (Reprise) is a marked change from his last exhibition at PFOAC. His theatrical, floaty compositions brimming with washes of vivid colours has been replaced by a more structured and controlled approach, reminiscent of the aesthetics of Cubism and Constructivism. Limited to a colour palette of green, ochre, and white, this latest series of works references architectural drawings and diagrams. Overlapping rectangles jut out at sharp angles, clusters of them balance on spindly legs; empty frames overlap tidy grids, alluding to arched doorways and banisters.

Dominating the canvases is the signature green of cutting mats, chalkboards, and green screens. The foundation of most paintings is a background of rubbery green with a grid of thin white lines fading in and out of view. They symbolize the spaces of creation, of new ideas, of problem solving and new beginnings.

A demonstration of the artist’s own prowess in abstract thinking are his series of drawings. They illustrate an imaginary process of dismantling an abstract, complex structure teetering on the brink of balance, imagining every beam dislodging and tumbling to the ground until the structure is fully disintegrated.

Central to both the paintings and the drawings is an interplay of abstraction and figuration, paralleled by the cycle of creation, destruction, and transformation.

Pierre-François Ouellette Art Contemporain, space 216
Dil Hildebrand
Back to the Drawing Board (Reprise)
May 12 – June 30, 2012
www.pfoac.com