KEY POINTS:
In contemporary art, the actual process of making the art often dominates the subject. This is totally the case in Boing Boom Tschak by Simon Ingram at Gow Langsford Gallery. The paintings are made by machine on the spot during the course of the exhibition.
The machines are not entirely the point. Though they are beautifully crafted and fascinating to watch, they are not as complex as even the simplest printing press. But a press reproduces existing images and these machines appear to make original decisions. The exhibition is about the philosophy of making decisions and the links between an artist's concept and the making of the work.
The gallery is set up as an artist's studio with finished canvases on the wall and paintings in the process of being made. It is fascinating to watch the buzzing machines at work. The unit carrying the brush rises up, pauses, then moves across. The brush dips in paint and moves on to canvas. The machine moves again and the brush moves horizontally, vertically or diagonally. It makes a short mark or a long line. The brush lifts back and we wait. It is impossible to predict the next stroke. We give the machine a mind and wait for its decision.
In reality the decisions have already been made. A hidden computer in the ceiling transmits messages to the mechanisms that appear to act on their own. The human artist is in charge but not necessarily present. In the world of modern art this gap is constantly present in design, painting, sculpture and architecture.
In this show the results, though perhaps beside the point, are mixed. The paintings are all monochrome and not very dense. They are at their best when another element is mixed in, like the use of masking tape. This produces a contrast between geometric forms that look calculated and more woolly forms that appear spontaneous. The best results are in black and white.
The same emphasis on process is apparent in Works on Paper at Two Rooms in Newton, featuring international and local artists. Noel Ivanoff of Auckland has four works where thick pigment swirls in overlapping circles of regular size. Because the whole space has been filled without a pause in the movement of the spinning disc process creating the forms, they appear like a pipeline moving away from the viewer. The effect is heavy yet full of energy.
The same process of a continual movement is also a feature of Simon Morris. His work consists of an even pathway that the eye follows with rich enjoyment. The works are at their most lively when the final exit of the eye's journey is upwards as in Red Vermillion Line.
Other artists get their effects in different ways. Two of them, both from Germany, use black. Joachim Bandau layers veils of pale watercolour one on top of the other until they grow to a rich darkness while Frank Gerritz achieves the intense, thick black of his plain, geometric forms with pencil.
Black that reads as deep space like darkness visible is also a feature of the painting of Winston Roeth at Jensen Gallery. His work is straightforward abstraction that for the most part poses two aluminium panels, one above the other, with a narrow gap between them that irresistibly reads as a horizon. In Duet the dark is below and a violet light above. Darklight Two has a pair of black panels. Gemini is red-brown and black. The importance of the colour
juxtapositions is emphasised by a series of slate panels where the richness of the colour is complemented by the texture of the stone.
But for a field of pure delightful colour you must go up the breakneck wooden stair at Jensen for Paradisio which has an entrancing green/blue space edged with gold. The splendour of this colour matches the intensity of the colour of the slates and justifies the old-fashioned, unmixed simple geometry of the show as a whole.
The colour is rich but much more variegated in the work of Rebecca Wallis at Lane Gallery, though she paints on translucent panels to emphasise the effects of sunlight and transition. Her starting point is a photograph of a group of figures. These are so dissolved in colour, they lose any sense of identity. What we are left with is the feeling of intense light and movement. In some work we can sense a helicopter behind the group that emphasises the feeling
of transitory moments. Yet the work is about juxtaposing masses of colour that have been pushed around the panels with a maze of lines made by marker pens.
We cannot really find any interest in the people or their activity. The extraordinary way the colours mix to blur the figures and suggest the light make for paintings as pure of content as abstraction. The interest is in the making of them rather than anything they say about the human condition.
At the galleries
What: Boing Boom Tschak by Simon Ingram
Where and when: Gow Langsford Gallery, 26 Lorne St, to Feb 25
TJ says: Painting by machine where the product is much less than the process but the whole is an image of modern decision-making in art.
What:Where and when: Two Rooms, 16 Putiki St, Newton, to Feb 28
TJ says: Local and international artists create a variety of effects by using paint on a disc, collage, heavy 9B pencil, watercolour, and lines made without lifting the brush.
What:Where and when: Jensen Gallery, 11 McColl St, Newmarket, to March 7
TJ says: Geometric abstraction by prominent German painter where work on aluminium has depth. When the work is on slate, it depends on surface butcolour is always crucial.
What:Where and when: Lane Gallery, 33 Victoria St East, to Feb 28
TJ says: People waiting on a helicopter pad dissolved in colour light by a process of ink on Perspex.
