T. J. McNamara: Daring leaps and brilliant contrasts

Recognition is the great spur of artistic endeavour. This week we have two veterans, a newcomer and some internationals, all abstractionists who have achieved substantial recognition.

Milan Mrkusich had a retrospective exhibition at the University of Auckland's Gus Fisher Gallery in conjunction with the publication of a splendid book on his long career. The evidence that his considerable powers have not waned is at the Sue Crockford Gallery where he has a series of paintings called Seven Colour Alchemical Spectrum.

These are colour field geometric abstractions where the richness of the colour is complemented by narrow bands of opposing and related colour at the top and bottom. These small bands of colour have what the artist calls an alchemical relation to the main colours.

The colour fields are rich and their surfaces fascinating, notably in the startling red and blue-violet paintings. The colour is only muted in the gold field of the last painting, the culmination of the set which should have a loaded intensity. Perhaps the artist should have resorted to gold leaf.

Metallic leaf of various kinds plays a large part in the painting of Max Gimblett, at the Gow Langsford Gallery. The New Zealand-born artist, who divides his time between here and New York, has had the extraordinary accolade of having a work chosen for a full-scale exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

This Auckland show, called Full Fathom Five, is further evidence of the level of his accomplishment.

It makes clear Gimblett's influences from 20th-century American painting, particularly in the confident size and the big gestures in the manner of Franz Kline. The surprise is the variety of effect within his established style.

The first painting in the show is a large quatrefoil called Magpie, which is Gimblett at his best.

Within its firm shape there are sustained gestures of intense energy. The colour sings. This is a joyous work with lyric use of yellow, orange and pink. Yet across these rich colours runs a gestural form that looks utterly spontaneous but is a journey in itself.

It is done in champagne-coloured silver leaf and the techniques of its application are a mystery. It comes decisively down, loops up, then appears to fade but gathers to a curving drive towards the edge. All this joy and energy is held in the precise geometry of a circle within the quatrefoil. It looks easy but is a result of knowledge, meditation, skill and experience and has its own special magnificence.

There are several small paintings in the show which are similarly light and lyrical but another dominating one is a big black and silver on white work called Maui - Trickster. It concerns shape-shifting. On the right is a huge thick black gesture, assertive and strong: on the left is a related area of black broken gestures.

Whether this does link to aspects of Maori mythology, whether it makes you think of how shapes emerge from clouds of being, or you think of it as a meditation on darkness and light; it is a tempestuous, impressive example of something rich and strange despite its limited colour.

The use of special materials and geometry alongside the gesture is particularly notable in a recent work called The Dragon and the Tiger. This is in two parts. One part is covered with Japanese bronze-coloured silver leaf in a grid pattern that makes an elegant but potent surface. The other panel, vividly orange, has black forms on it, decisive, aggressive and vital.

The exhibition in the main room culminates in Harlequin Parade, an exceptionally large red work with great leaps in white, black and gold shapes like a trumpet call.

In the back room of the gallery there is another huge work with great surging shapes, scattering and splashing. It is called Upstream - After Ernest Hemingway.

Unusually, it contains a specific form: a fish. This and the title tend to constrict the imagination by being much more specific than the huge movement the painting calls for.

Another form of recognition is represented in an authoritative book. In the useful Seen this Century, Warwick Brown writes and illustrates a commentary on 100 artists who have come to some prominence since the turn of the new century.

Among them is Andrew Tolhurst, who has an exhibition of geometric abstractions at the Corban Art Centre in Henderson. The precision of his shapes is achieved by applying cut vinyl on to a plain background. The work makes strong, vivid abstract compositions.

But this is the 21st century and everything has a spin on it. These bright, clean patterns trigger a sense of familiarity and certain cues make us realise that behind this work is the packaging of everyday objects, often encountered as bright, unnatural litter.

The cues may be no more than the little square that is the entrance to the stylised beehive on a box of matches. The hive form is dissolved and reappears as a rectangle but the little entrance remains to give a shock of recognition.

In this startling work the bright colour is conveyed between brown patterns that transform the striking strips on the side of the box.

Icecream tubs are evoked elsewhere but the most spectacular are the two works that sublimate Vegemite and Marmite. This postmodern abstract painting and the references to our world are clear and pertinent.

At the Jensen Gallery are three artists who have achieved a degree of worldwide recognition.

Fred Sandback defines space with taut lines of acrylic yarn. In one remarkable piece, the way in which one side is black yarn and the other grey is instrumental in defining a perceived plane.

Black is all for Gunter Imberg. His works are panels of a black so intense it is like outer space without stars.

The show is completed by Callum Innes, whose style is conveyed by a title such as Agitated Vertical on White. It is a grand opportunity to compare achievement here with international abstract work.

At the galleries

What: Seven Colour Alchemical Spectrum, by Milan Mrkusich
Where and when: Sue Crockford Gallery, 2 Queen St, to May 30
TJ says: A set of seven rich colourfield paintings that work as a group or as individual works.

What: Full Fathom Five, by Max Gimblett
Where and when: Gow Langsford Gallery, 26 Lorne St, to May 29
TJ says: Max Gimblett pursues his New York style with remarkable vigour and an admirable variety of thought and mood within that style.

What: A West Auckland Parody, by Andrew Tolhurst
Where and when: Corban Estate Arts Centre, 426 Great North Rd, to May 21
TJ says: A brave new artist on the scene putting life into geometric abstraction by linking it to the ambiguities of packaging and litter.

What: E=MC2, by Fred Sandback, Gunter Umber and Callum Innes
Where and when: Jensen Gallery, 11 McColl St, Newmarket, to mid-May
TJ says: Extreme abstraction taken right to the edge by artists of international repute.