Ted Pim. Never Odd or Even

About

Mirrors can be portals to other realms. In Irish folk tradition, reflective surfaces are covered at a wake for fear that the soul of the deceased might otherwise slip through. In 'Snow White,' it is before her own reflection in a glass chalice that the queen transforms into a witch. Such surfaces have long appeared in mythology and throughout art history as points of revelation and metamorphosis. In Never Odd or Even, Ted Pim’s paintings map out the anatomy of transformation using mirror image as a central motif. At the heart of the exhibition is the idea that transformation is not something that requires new material, but instead is an altering of what we already have. To this end, Pim segments and repurposes Old Masters paintings. Some are abstracted via a duplication that sees identical forms mirrored as they merge or collide on either side of a central axis. These images are formed from fragments of Renaissance and Baroque paintings paired with imagery from fashion magazines and Irish mythology. Their symmetry echoes the cyclical structure of existence, hinting at an underlying message of the exhibition that as much as we transform history, always repeats.

— Sophie Naufal, arts and culture journalist