Alchemy of art turns paint into gold

Journey by Milan Mrkusich at the Gus Fisher Gallery. Photo / Richard Robinson

The exhibition at the Gus Fisher Gallery that accompanies the launch of a book by Alan Wright and Edward Hanfling on the art of Milan Mrkusich is called, very appropriately, Transform.

In many ways all art is a process of transformation. Commonplace but tangible materials - in the case of painting, pigments and canvas or panels - are changed into something that has intangible values recognised only in the mind by emotional or intellectual response.

Alchemists of the Middle Ages constantly tried to change base materials into gold. The analogy, used frequently in the book, is appropriate since with Mrkusich the pigments are used to produce something rich and strange: abstract art, paintings that have no reference to any object in the world but exist in their own right.

Mrkusich, born in 1925, was one of the earliest artists in New Zealand to work in an international abstract style and has remained constant to this manner over his long and productive career. This exhibition, curated by the authors of the book, contains just 20 of his works that range from his beginnings to his majestic maturity.

The immediate impression is of the richness of the colour fields, especially in the large-scale paintings. The creation of such large masses of colour is masterly. In abstract work like this, if the paint is thin it can look no more than house paint. Thick paint can look clumsy and if paint is inexpertly piled on layer after layer to achieve richness of effect, the surface can end up shiny as linoleum and just as dull.

Mrkusich's colour fields have great depth yet remain delicate and subtle surfaces suggest profound moods of joy or melancholy according to the colour.

The early paintings, which are in the smaller room, show the artist's original impulse was to use an Expressionist energetic brushstroke to convey emotional commitment. This was followed by a development that matched the clouds of colour with precisely defined geometric shapes.

What emerges is a powerful contrast between loose clouds of emotion and precise intellectual structures. The stream of the artist's consciousness produces unstructured emotion which his intellect forms into concepts, mind into matter.

The most spectacular of such work is the big red painting on loan from the Christchurch Art Gallery where a turbulent crimson is confined by neatly triangular corners - a Mrkusich trade mark.

Another fine example is Ambient Gold, where a rich colour field with gold applied as the last layer is checked by a red corner and where even a short black vertical plays its part in giving the painting its tension and what Henri Bergson, whose philosophy is reflected in the work, calls elan vital.

At the Gus Fisher the space over the staircase in the foyer is often reserved for an especially impressive work. In this show it is Journey (1987), a march of four paintings that move from a dark beginning through a tall pillar of silver revelation and end in an opulent pastoral green.

Its place of honour is part of a fine show that is a worthy tribute to a creative career that has been a formidable part of art in New Zealand over the last 50 or more years.

Jude Rae is another artist who turns the commonplace into artistic gold. In the past she has painted such household things as gas bottles and fire extinguishers, making from them a magic art. This transformation was achieved by her rendering of the light that defined these objects and by the exquisite quality of her paint surfaces.

There is one of these still life paintings in her exhibition at the Jensen Gallery but the other four paintings contain new departures. One of them, Corridor, shows a passageway in a public building in Paris but from its cold simplicity she makes an arrangement of light, reflection and shadow that makes it a convincing abstraction as well as an image of all such Kafkaesque corridors.

The same careful arrangement of line and form makes a painting of a space in Heathrow Airport an impressively beautiful work of art.

Another painting of the same subject silhouettes dark figures against the light but with a change of style. The dark foreground is allowed to cascade in drips that emphasise the painting process. It is debatable how well this works because it changes the unity of the painting into a contrast between depth and surface.

In July 2006 the dripping paint falls consistently from the top of the painting. It forms a blue veil of melancholy over the whole large canvas. Behind the veil, groupings of men look toward a distant horizon with a vividly painted setting sun. Above the horizon a pall of smoke turns into smudges of dirty cloud above the sunset. Something terrible and apocalyptic but undefined is happening. The work is solemn but a wonderful piece of painting. The groups of men are spectators of some event whose portent is veiled but suggests tears at the heart of things.

It is an extraordinary work and a convincing new direction.

The commonplace is part of the work of James Cousins at the Gow Langsford Gallery. He begins by painting a picture of a tree, a waterfall or a stream that might grace a giveaway calendar.

One of the best is simply called Calendar and its basic image is autumnal poplars beside a stream. That is only part of the matter.

Overlaying the basic paintings are throbbing patterns of concentric lines such as those used in diagrams of radio transmissions. From painting to painting these patterns vary as if each was on a different wavelength. At times they are dislocated into angular patterns of interference but they all have a technological rhythm. Sometimes there is another layer of painting added over the patterns.

The result transforms the banality of the original image, reminding us that in our present world we are constantly surrounded by unseen transmissions. The wave patterns are at their best when they sweep across the canvas but when they intersect and visually contradict each other, some of the tension is lost. This is a show of considerable painterly assurance that works a special alchemy by using the diagrams of science.

At the galleries

What: Transform: The Abstract Art of Milan Mrkusich
Where and when: Gus Fisher Gallery, 74 Shortland St, to May 2
TJ says: A carefully selected exhibition borrowed from collectors, institutions and the artist's own studio is a tribute and a delightful guide to the achievement of one of our own Old Masters.
What: Paintings, by Jude Rae
Where and when: Jensen Gallery, 11 McColl St, to April 3
TJ says: The virtuoso handling of light, colour and surface usual with Jude Rae are extended to new subject matter with potent, solemn effect.
What: Signal, by James Cousins
Where and when: Gow Langsford Gallery, 26 Lorne St, to April 3
TJ says: The ordinary and the picturesque overlaid with the throbbing rhythms of the transmissions that fill the air around us painted with energy and assurance.