The Power Plant

The Power Plant continues its longstanding Fleck Clerestory Commission Program A Room’s Proportion, above or below by Toronto-based artist Ella Gonzales. Gonzales is a Filipina-Canadian artist working between painting and Computer-Aided Design programs, as led by her interest in space making. Inspired by the concept of displacement that immigrant communities experience, she is known for her paintings on piña silk, a fabric made from the leaves of a pineapple plant that is native to the Philippines

Working across painting and architecture, at The Power Plant Gonzales has created her largest installation to date with a site-responsive arrangement of painted chiffon and silk curtains. The work continues her consideration of familial architecture by superimposing remembered proportions onto the Clerestory gallery's distinct structural features. The work transforms the space through layers of translucent fabric based on domestic interior proportions recalled from memory. As one remembered space is superimposed onto another, visitors move through overlapping rooms, histories, and perspectives. Responding to the idea of the threshold, we are invited to consider what happens when one condition slips into another, and how traces of what came before remain visible in what follows.