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Ed Touchette
New Construction

August 19, 2017October 1, 2017

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Trident Gallery is very pleased to present New Construction, an exhibition of new paintings on canvas and paper by Ed Touchette. New Construction is Touchette’s second solo exhibition at Trident Gallery and will be on view August 19 – September 17, 2017 (extended through October 1). Gallery hours are Friday and Saturday 10–7; Sunday, Monday, Thursday 10–5; Tuesday and Wednesday by appointment. The gallery will host an Opening Reception for the artist on Saturday, August 19, 5–7pm. The following weekend, on Sunday, August 27, at 4pm, the gallery will host a Conversation with Ed Touchette about his artistic process and recent work.

Ed Touchette’s latest paintings are often simplified shapes and colors in an energetic composition, establishing a kinetic tension and visual liveliness. Simple painted black lines, which the artist sometimes likens to the runes of an ancient language, also create a remarkable sense of depth and volume.

Others showing more complexity seem like impressionist records of profound architectural wonders, a child-like spirit marveling at a dramatic public monument, a busy construction site, or a bustling city from a high vantage. At the same time, these paintings are also strikingly generative, not recorded impression but the expression of imaginative forces, optimism, delight, and ideas of order.

This duality suggests deep parallels between Touchette’s paintings and poetry, which poet Wallace Stevens has described as an interdependence of imagination and reality as equals.

Ed Touchette’s paintings are a distillation of creative energy into principled structures. They offer a vision of a chaotic utopia and invite us to participate through aesthetic contemplation and delight.