Madeleine Gross @ Pontone Gallery

Madeleine Gross makes her singular and distinctive pictures by painting onto her own original photographs. Idyllic images of sunset Ontario lakes and gleaming Miami beaches are overlaid with expressively painted naked figures and gestural brush marks. The aesthetic contrast between the smooth, machine-made surface of the photographic background and the smears, clots and streaks of freely applied paint is immediately arresting. The artist’s dramatic interventions prompt an inquiry into the personal significance of these pieces.