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The reductive fictions of the sixteen paintings in this exhibition find their basis in the idiosyncrasies of Brett Colquhoun 's personal iconography. Displaced from any identifiable context, the objects depicted in these works are distilled and scaled-up, which gives them an anthropomorphic dimension. As elemental compositional shapes, they form new structures by which particular conceptual interrelationships are manifested. The backgrounds are often monochromatic, producing a condensed, shallow space, attenuating the illusionistic distancing of the viewer.
The first work able to be seen fully when one enters the gallery is Insomnia (1992), which depicts the suspended lower part of an upside-down pill bottle. Like Wallace Stevens' poem "Anecdote of the Jar", this work sets up an interaction between the object and its background which changes according to one's perception. The empty bottle, even though taking up most of the canvas, appears consumed by the rich surrounding blue- the two-dimensionality of the bottle's outline seemingly etched into the blue space. The transparency of the bottle recalls Roger Caillois' notion , in his essay "Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia", that "the magical hold ... of night and obscurity, the fear of the dark, probably also has its roots in the peril in which it puts the opposition between the organism andthe milieu .'1 By tilling this painting Insomnia Colquhoun fuses it to the personal, the bottle becoming a model of the self which is both engulfed by and rejects its physical state.
These works do not resolve themselves as linear developments of: meaning but rather present a collage of ambiguities. They follow a kind of dream logic. In Awaken (1992) a closed book sits on the left of a black field . In