Modern visual art opens our eyes to aspects of the world by its particular modes of expression rather than by simple depiction or storytelling. A walk along Karangahape Road to Arch Hill visiting three galleries reveals how three artists use markedly different ways of painting thought and things.
At the Ivan Anthony Gallery, Jess Johnson uses exceptionally unusual means to describe her curious imaginings of temples of magic and tension. Her materials are pen and ink, fibre tipped markers, metallic paint and gouache all used on paper.
Her work is an art of effects. It includes dazzling forms allied to impressively fine detail and vistas in linear perspective. The vistas often lead toward deep darkness in the background without a trace of haze or dimmed aerial effects. Everywhere there are vertical and horizontal patterns done with exact, fine lines and with multiple gradations of colour that come from an exceptional sureness of hand.
These hard-edged structures are inhabited by male gymnasts or contortionists who worship, as if in temples, adorned with masks of animals or elaborate detached heads of demons. It creates a surreal world of great complexity and disturbing eeriness.
Some details have a special kind of complexity. Medallions hang in the rarefied air made up of inextricably tangled forms of great intricacy that take skill to draw and, by their strangeness, add to the overall effect of solemn ritual.
A large piece called, Wurld Shut Your Mouth is an arcaded tunnel presided over by two demons, one a severed head and the other a mask. Under their gaze eight animal headed figures lap at the floor. Equally complex is, What You See is All There Is with columns of gymnasts all with ribboned tongues hanging out alongside heads of demons and patterns of hands. The perspective swerves away into the darkness hiding the vanishing point.
An exception to the prevailing vast perspective constructions is Alien Sex Magic, a flat cascade of more than 50 figures. Humans clad in no more than blue underwear, animals and demons all tumble down the pictorial space like a traditional the Fall of the Rebel Angels or a Last Judgement.
The whole show creates a special world drawn in a style that is instantly recognisable and uniquely compelling.
Paradoxically, the photographs in the exhibition at Starkwhite by the veteran photographer, Gavin Hipkins are about painting and monumentality and the images are broad and minimalist. His route toward the final simplicity is circuitous.
He has taken some children's wooden construction blocks and painted their plain surfaces in black, white and subdued colour. He has put the blocks together in pairs, photographed them and enlarged the photographs to considerable size. The blocks are seen from one side only or from directly above.
The results are strikingly simple. Not only is the texture of the paint revealed by the enlargement but also the shapes become monumental and their weight exerts pressure - each against the other. When tapering blocks are placed one on top of the other they read from a distance as two planes in deep perspective but are weighty objects when seen close up when the texture of the paint is apparent.
An image taken from above, one block on top of another, takes on surprising modulations. The top block, blue with marked edges, appears flat though rippled with paint while the other block, which has rounded edges, becomes blurred against a dark background. The effect is like a strong minimalist painting joined with a documentary reality.
These investigations into perception of weight and volume have a quiet resonance in their simplicity that takes them beyond what could easily be an academic exercise into something solemn, still and strange.
Wurld, Shut Your Mouth by Jess Johnson.
The paintings of Nicola Farquhar at the Hopkinson Mossman Gallery show a third distinct style. It is rich and romantic. Both the handling and the colour are celebratory and rhapsodic. They are the work of a young artist who is enthusiastic about colour and the act of painting yet aware of traditional forms. The show is called Rustles and there is a strong feel of natural growing forms. These surround and are sometimes confined within a space at the centre of the painting that references portrait heads as well as wreathing around it.
A beguiling work called Pith has a shape enclosed in green but within its boundaries a group of separate cells cluster which act like a source of energy. The predominating green in this work is subtly matched with shades of blue. Elk is a head and shoulders with a mass of parallel strokes of paint backed with green and orange. Shush has a stooping enfolding form while Flit is in constant motion upward and is vivid with red and green. Green also floods the surface in Mart.
All of these appealing, rich paintings are done with the utmost spontaneity and decisive application of paint not as passionate expressionism but rather as a quiet indulgence in richness.
Farquhar is also one of the more impressive artists included in the wide survey exhibition of recent painting in New Zealand that opened last week at the Auckland Art Gallery.
At the galleries
What: Sensorium Chamber by Jess Johnson Where and when: Ivan Anthony Gallery, 312c Karangahape Rd, to December 19 TJ says: Paintings of great complexity done with exacting skills with to create a complex surreal world of temples and magic.
What: Rustles by Nicola Farquhar Where and when: Hopkinson Mossman Gallery, 1/19 Putiki St, Arch Hill, to December 19 TJ says: Densely painted images that combine the head shapes of portraits with direct painting and dense effective colour combinations of natural forms.
