Pat Phillips: Untitled: Dad Drew All of My Book Report Posters

Pat Phillips’s approach to drawing and working on paper is foregrounded in his solo exhibition, Untitled: Dad Drew All of My Book Report Posters. Paper was an early site for Phillips to explore the relationship between forms and materials. Having written graffiti in his youth, Phillips would regularly use paper to develop letter structures and test colour combinations using the Rust-Oleum product line before applying them permanently to the train cars that would transit the reaches of North America. With paper remaining as an honest and vulnerable space for Phillips to explore, his experimentation of material and mark-making can be seen in the works on view. His works demonstrate his thinking in graphite, ink, paint and collage, with constant consideration of how the presence of one material may build upon the presence of another. His works offer glimpses into an ongoing contemplation rather than definitive conclusions. Working on paper allows ideas to take shape, be set aside, and return with new clarity as time creates distance from their initial impressions. In this way, the works remain somewhere between the beginning and the end of an idea. They neither resolve the tensions they address nor simply illustrate them but hold them open for further consideration.