At various times, Brent Wadden (b.1979, Canada), Beth Letain (b. 1976, Canada), and Blair Thurman (b.1961, United States of America), all studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. At our Westbund booth and at our exhibition in collaboration with McNamara Projects in Hong Kong, we position new works by these three artists, who use very different approaches and mediums, in conversation. Their works share an obsession with form and color, grounded in materiality. In stark contrast to the aggressive stimuli that grab at us regularly through our screens, the works in this exhibition act on the body as the eye seeing in the dark – clarity comes gradually. Apprehended quickly or from afar, the works shape-shift into solid forms – plastic, steady, sculptural. With proximity however, they transform. The materiality of the work becomes visible, the importance of practice is a clear motif as process and labor is made apparent. How the hands of Wadden, Letain or Thurman wobbled suddenly, or sped off the canvas connects the viewer to the artist. This indexical relationship of the work to the artist is exposed as their traces and gestures are revealed. The unevenness of the weave becomes clearer, and what we had assumed was plastic is in actuality brush strokes. What was easily discernible becomes complicated and evasive.