There is abstract art and there is art that lies somewhere between the abstract and the recognizable.

Keith Wood’s latest exhibition, Fragmented Probabilities, currently showing at Gurevich Fine Art, walks this line of uncannily familiar abstraction.

The 18-piece exhibition is entirely in the encaustic medium, which involves varnish and pigment mixed with molten beeswax added in semi-transparent layers to either canvas, paper or wood panels.

The effect of this process is quite different from that of either oil or acrylic paint.

The textures of the pieces create an almost three-dimensional experience where the various strokes take on whole new meanings.

The bumps and lines are smooth, but jarring. The different layers stand out from each other with real physical presence and inevitably represent weight and momentum.

“ This exhibition is mesmerizing in its expansiveness and humbling in its unqualified imagination

The encaustic colours are different, too. They are mostly soft and wonderfully blended, but the occasional sharp splash of colour is all the more vibrant amid the subtleties of the rest.

Wood uses a stark contrast of soft backgrounds and sharp foregrounds. The multi-layered nature of the medium means that the innumerable background colours become a hypnotic wash, broken only by the violent and unapologetic interference of the subjects.

The drizzled lines and anomalous patches of foreground colour look like the sketches of a mad scientist - one who lives in a world where the multi-coloured fog of timeless confusion aids, rather than obscures, the end of progress.

Each and every piece looks like the evidence of a profound discovery.

There are hints of human and animal bodies, of architecture and of landscape. The whole experience is so close to something that should be recognizable that it quickly becomes unsettling when the familiar never fully appears.

The show is in the back room of the Gurevich gallery. The floor is patchwork hardwood and the walls are pure white.

Moving from piece to piece, patterns emerge in Wood’s creative and imaginative processes. The anomalous bubbles of undefined purpose on one canvas reappear on another, but without betraying their objective.

The theme of layers cannot be overlooked or overstated. Looking at each piece you can see its genesis and its progression. Taken in with special consideration of the exhibition’s title, Fragmented Probabilities, the story behind each piece becomes clearer in its conceptual purpose.

This exhibition is mesmerizing in its expansiveness and humbling in its unqualified imagination. A true must-see.

See Fragmented Probabilities at Gurevich Fine Art (second floor, 62 Albert St.) until Saturday, Nov. 26. Visit www.gurevichfineart.com and www.theartofkeithwood.ca.

Published in Volume 66, Number 11 of The Uniter (November 9, 2011)