C. Wells
Place and Space (Redux)

Since 1996, C. Wells has developed a painting practice akin in spirit to that of a contemporary topographer, exclusively using line marker paint—an industrial medium used to mark the borders and boundaries of highways and roads to regulate vehicular or pedestrian movement. Whether replicating the language of the lines or using the paint itself as material to create various narratives, he investigates the history and heritage of line marking, beginning with its origins in Trenton, Michigan in 1911. Analogous to a social cultural pursuit that can be read equally as art, abstraction or as a new treatise on landscape painting, Wells purports the ubiquity of the line marker as the emblem of city, country and spaces in-between. (REDUX) comprises a body of works that debuted in the 2012 exhibition Place and Space, organized by the artist for 270 Sherman Avenue North in Hamilton.