Feelers'
Susan Hobbs
Toronto
This tantalizing show offered just a taste of the work of Sandra Meigs, Sarah Massecar, and Arlene Shechet, each of whom deserved her own exhibition. Meigs's canvases from her 2004 "Ride" series reveal an absurdist sensibility. Painted in layers of gesso built up to form shallow reliefs beneath vivid oil surfaces, they appear at first to be pure abstractions. Only gradually do we see the blobby comical figures described by such titles as Boy with a Rabbit on His Head or Girl Kissing Ducks. The way Meigs creates human gestures from amorphous shapes is oddly moving. Demonstrating her range. As Though a Human Breath (2009) is a cool, mysterious portrayal of an empty interior. Massecar's four gouache-and-pen works on paper were based on push puppets, those small figures held together by taut strings that collapse when a button is pushed and come back together when it is released. Massecar drew studies of the toys, in which she scattered the segments and then reconfigured them. Delicately drawn, these disarticulated scraps seem to be striving to regain their original forms. Massecar keeps the inspired commotion going by incorporating the actual threads that once held the limbs together. Shechet's two hefty ceramic sculptures featured strange trunklike forms that may well have been trying to come alive. Tough Puff (2008) is a solidified explosion, while Up for Air C2007) menaces with sheer weight and warty tentacles. —Kate Regan