Canan Tolon

Turkish-born and California-based, Canan Tolon is a visual artist who takes as her subject the exploration of space, time, and gravity. Tolon is particularly interested in how processes of aging and growth affect spaces, resulting in works that she describes as “landscapes stripped to their elemental state.” Tolon seeks out unexpected interactions between materials, and thereby, she works in a variety of mediums not limited to painting, drawing, and assemblage. Her unexpected and unconventional techniques run the gamut, from letting grass grow on a canvas to covering a surface with coffee grounds before applying paint or pigment.

Tolon’s work is fundamentally influenced by architecture, as she holds multiple degrees in the discipline. Her abstract paintings, for example, are often distinctly linear and evocative of urban structures; busy and energized, they vividly call to mind the speed and movement of a city or built landscape. 

Tolon has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Institute for Humanities at the University of Michigan, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Fe, among others. Selected group exhibitions include the Kiev Biennale, as well as shows at the Istanbul Modern Art Museum, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Copenhagen’s Rundetårn Art Center, and the San Jose Museum of Art.