Daniel Hesidence.

Greener Pastures Contemporary Art | Toronto, Canada

For Daniel Hesidence, painting never died. Or so at least his brushstrokes suggest. In his first Canadian solo (through January 24), the New York-based painter makes the case that painting may still be alive and kicking. All five oils here, ranging from a miniscule 7-by-9 to a whopping, wall-sized 96-by-132 inches, are from his 2007 Untitled (1 7 7 9/Pedestrians) series, whose mysterious numbers hold no more clues than the infamous Hanger 18. Yet Hesidence's brush hones the canvas like a celestial diamond cutter without leaving behind any shards of the world beyond or beneath. It's as if painting had never gone six feet under.

That's a far cry from those who came before him. Among the first to declare the death of painting was Paul Delaroche. This was in 1839, after the rise of photography. Alexander Rodchenko and the Constructivist gang followed in 1921, and in 1960 Ad Reinhardt claimed with his somber black canvases that painting is no more than a hanging corpse on a wall. It's no coincidence that the word pain can be found in painting.

In this show, Hesidence goes to great pains to show otherwise. The largest canvas on display is a rainbow of suave pastel lilac and cobalt blues dipped in a sea of milk, its sometimes choppy brushstrokes calling to mind Cy Twombly's. For the most part, this monster canvas is reminiscent of a formless Willem de Kooning woman infused with the whimsicality of Al Held. Clearly, Hesidence's style could be packaged as latter-day abstract expressionism. But there's no need to replay the now-broken record of modernism: Hesidence is neither lost in, nor entirely over the past. He treats paint like taffy and kneads together his influences--both historical and daringly hip--the same way.

For instance, the 96-by-72-inch canvas has a red-and-purple flame forming a "V" shape, like your retro living room abstract lifted from a shopping-mall framing store. But in true Hesidence style, his braiding of loopy brushstrokes with the odd Gerhard Richter scrape distorts the picturesque quality of an above-the-couch ornament. It's slightly sloppy. Meaning, it leans toward soft mockery.

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That hipster irony continues in the 38-by-28-inch version where long wet locks could easily feel at home in black velvet paintings or tropical tourist art from Jamaica to Peru. But it's not all painterly sarcasm. What matters most is how Hesidence, who ranges from a scrappy dry-brusher to a wet-dripper, rarely relies on formula. Especially in a medium that has been played out tenfold, this resistance is ultimately what keeps the pulse of painting beating--even if it still reeks of the retirement home.