KEY POINTS:
Francesco Goya, the great Spanish painter often considered the first modern painter, has an influence which persists even here on the edge of the world after nearly 200 years. His power lies in two directions. The first is documenting contemporary events as in the great painting The Executions of the Third of May and, secondly, his ability to create a sinister atmosphere on a small scale as shown in many of his prints such as the Capriccios.
The Third of May is a large painting done with great attack and the paintings of Greg Lewis, at Whitespace in Crummer Rd until November 10, are nearly as large.
Goya's painting captures an important moment that stimulated resistance to the Napoleonic invader. It is lit by lantern light. Similarly, Lewis' paintings are lit like flash photography. The distribution of light and its reflection around the painting Yellow Dodge Damascus is of the utmost importance in the atmosphere created - although the event is not politically important but illuminates the nature of a small part of struggling contemporary society in the ravaged Middle East.
Why not simply take a photograph in Damascus of a mighty 1972 Dodge taxi with bull-bars, an aggressive male driver and a one-legged man?
The answer lies in the effectiveness of the hand-created image where we can follow the energy and emotion of its making in the lively brushwork. This is painting in the grand old manner, not wildly Expressionistic but finding a vigorous equivalent in paint for people, objects and light in a way that enables us to share in all the decisions that created the image.
Lewis' previous work drew on memories of his grandfather's participation in World War II, with thunderous images of tanks, helmets and skulls. Those images were melodramatic but the present painting, particularly the big cars, roadside effigies and the frontal image of a taxi driver, have the immediacy of personal experience. They make the picturesque pictures of holy men at prayer, which are also in the show, seem conventional by comparison.
Lewis is a painter with a range of skills that enable him to create modern images reflecting his experience and feelings in a highly individual way that still hooks into some long traditions.
Goya's magic and surreal works have a counterpart in the work of Jason Greig in The Judas Kiss, at Roger Williams Contemporary until November 13. With one exception, his works are monoprints where the images are painted on glass and transferred to paper, and produce effects of darkness and soft-edged shapes.
The works also owe a considerable debt to the decadent, edgy, fin-de-siecle mood of Felicien Rops and Odilon Redon. The soft dream-like atmosphere of Redon is seen in the mysterious head called False Idol. What is impressive about this show is the range of effects from a flying sphinx equipped with wings designed by the pioneer flyer, Otto Liliental, to a prisoner in a dark pit in The Battle of Bedlam and on to the extraordinary figure of a galloping Mephistophelean spirit against a huge moon in Apocalypse Then. The atmosphere of strangeness is well achieved.
These works are small but intense and herald the arrival of an exceptional talent on the Auckland scene.
This show is upstairs at Roger Williams and to get there one must run the gauntlet of two astringent abstract works conceived by Billy Apple, one at each end of the gallery. These Apple works are an exact floor plan of the gallery the viewer is standing in and there is a little shock of recognition as you recognise a blue rectangle on the plan as a drain cover on the floor which has been painted bright blue. One work is black on white and the other is white on black. They are an acute comment on the nature and origins of minimal abstract art, but it is an Applesque comment that has been made before.
Strangeness and complexity are also part of an exhibition by Emma McLellan at the Lane Gallery until November 10. The show is entitled Chimera because it is full of strange beasts - ferrets, ducks and dodos.
In some works, these figures, usually shown in symmetrical compositions, have been distorted by dragging them out of shape to hint at the dangers of genetic modification. The distortions are particularly apparent in Chimera XIII.
Yet the mood is hard to read. They have a decorative charm and the animals are often more delightful than odd. It would be easy to take them at face value, which is almost value enough. The combination of screen print and paint used cleverly allows these contradictions of thought and image to be pulled together as work with a visual flavour all its own.
There is a special flavour too, to the work on a much larger scale, at the lively City Art Rooms in Lorne St where Young Sun Han is showing InvAsian! until November 7. These large prints, for the most part, show Asian Apollos in underpants.
The mystical and godlike quality is emphasised by the eyes of these figures being luminous blank ovals. The underpants are what our name-brand society is heir to.
This is a startlingly bold celebration of homo-eroticism.
