Untitled 3, 2009
"In instructive contrast to Tim Lee's presentation of himself for delectation, is this charming exhibition of new works on paper by Toronto-based painter David Urban.
Urban is one of those artists in love with painting. These new paintings are small-format works that consist of numerous variations upon the subject of a four-sided, frame-like shape in juxtaposition to a pink or cream-coloured sphere (with one black spot in it, which lends it an inescapable eye-like feeling).
The frame and the "eyeball" float in a softly spray-painted oval (spray painting is, I think, new for Urban) and the rhapsodic colours of these three items (frame, eyeball, oval) jangled together makes for something akin to a spring bouquet in picture form. Urban's sources are obviously and openly there in the paintings (Philip Guston, perhaps, and, more particularly, Hans Hofmann) and they are unashamedly old-fashioned in feeling. Old-fashioned but delightful. And curiously satisfying, now that they are off the cutting edge and closer to history."
-- Dault, Gary Michael. "A Random Coupling of Poetry and Physics." The Globe and Mail. 18 Apr. 2009: R15.
