The AVA Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Funny Things are Everywhere, a solo exhibition of new paintings and sculptures by Cape Town-based artist Mary Visser. 

The practise of painting and it’s perplexity is the subject of Mary Visser’s latest show opening at 6pm on Thursday 11 October 2018. This is the artist’s second solo exhibition with the AVA Gallery. 

With her canvases of loose and playful gestures, drips and stripey smears of layered and interlocked paint, Visser is concerned with inventing new spaces that reflect a more personal and transcendental state of mind, a painted world that may be fun to literally walk around in. Working intuitively in quick-drying acrylic, spray paint and crayon she works with a sense of urgency which resists overthinking and allows for spontaneous changes.

Visser explains “each painting is a conversation between me and the evolving painting. The delight of colour and mark thrills me; the unexpected surprise of what happens after the first brushstroke is made. I’m on the look out as I engage with the surface for those little moments of exhilaration. While the painting is an arena for action there is a constant shifting between chance and control. It is this experience of the process of a painting that I wish to share with the viewer.”

In addition to the paintings Visser has constructed 2 large-scale soft sculptures and various small 3D painted forms. As forms taken from the canvas, these sculptural pieces seek to make evident the delight that the painting process can bring.

Funny Things are Everywhere closes at 1pm on Saturday 27 October.