TJ McNamara: The wonder of existence and contrast

Why Are People by Herb Foley. Photo / Natalie Slade

The contrasts of contemporary art defy logic. Exhibitions can be so far apart in style and content that a person could be captivated by one and run screaming from the other. In fact, our sensibility has expanded to include and value all extremes. There are startling contrasts in two major exhibitions under the mantel of contemporary art this week.

One is of colourful, rectangular paintings in a conventional manner and the other is installed as rank on rank of steel in a dark cavernous space. Both employ art as metaphor.

The paintings, by veteran artist Herb Foley, are called The Wonder of Existence. The paintings, of trees and dense undergrowth, are recognisably New Zealand but not any particular area. This is a vision of the wonder of growing and changing life in images that are gentle but also strong. It is a style of ecstatic naturalism.

The images are complex patterns of life. Each painting moves from the undergrowth to the treetops. The tops of trees become clouds, adding an element of mystery. The undergrowth is populated by beetles, snails and even fish. The trunks of the trees give massive verticals to the works. In the dappled light that filters between them, you can catch glimpses of the past with moa and small figures of people, even a reclining odalisque.

All this is painted with great subtlety and interwoven so the eye makes small discoveries everywhere. Yet these paintings are much larger and more forceful than the last time Foley's work was seen here.

Silver Beech and Why Are People are assured paintings where the floating effect of trees and cloud suggest a mystery in the woods. Birds play their part too, sometimes as shapes flitting through the trees, sometimes playing a prominent part in the play of light and shade.

There has been a development of technique too in paintings such as Patterns of Light and Things Left. The surface, full of delicate detail, is tensioned and enlivened by spattered paint that confers a special kind of energy in keeping with the symbolism.

Foley has had many exhibitions expressing this Wordsworthian, romantic regard for nature but never one so rich and complex as this.

The work of et al. at Michael Lett is a huge roaring metaphor for modern life filled with speculation - not of the wonder of life but of the inexplicable problems of art, science and existence.

The gallery has shifted from Karangahape Rd to a basement well along Great North Rd. The narrow door leading to the gallery goes down a precipitous flight of steps into a large raw, concrete area.

Et al. has filled the space with more than 40 structures made of angle-iron, mostly supporting a slab-like metal surface. The effect combines engineering with overtones of a morgue. Some of the slabs are painted red.

The maze of these structures leads to a brightly lit corner where there is a folded screen, a projector that is not working, and a village of little boxes, four of which contain a blob of lead.

Over all this, a roar of noise comes from eight speakers attached in various ways to the metal structures. It adds an effect of incessant traffic moving among the levels of building and existence on many levels. The grimness, the hardness and the lack of colour are overwhelming and oppressive.

As well as this created world of iron surfaces with only a little muted relief in one corner, there's a room of steel with a narrow entrance. Inside, there is nothing comfortable. A projector and steel plates are stacked against the walls. From the projector comes an animated sequence in black and white. It shows ideas and thoughts developing but hurrying one after another as thoughts might race through an agitated brain: quick drawings filling in circles, mathematical formulae, diagrams. All in succession, so quick it is almost impossible to get a hold on anything. It seems a brief recapitulation of the development of science and philosophy.

There is talk of a tall tower and then we see a swinging pendulum which may reference Galileo and his experiments. But this is quickly supplanted by such things as the simple formula a+b = c+d used for triangulating an ellipse.

There is a note about an "angelic bomb" - destruction falling from the skies. It culminates in talk of birth and death and the vividness of everything. Yet it all goes past so quickly it could almost be anything at all.

When you emerge battered from the animation in the steel room, it is to come back again to the maze of structures and to accept as a ray of hope the accompanying literature stacked in piles of newsprint called Transcription No 3. The heading is: "Description of the Machine."

Much is made of words like actuality, the absence of being, dependent origination, as well as graphs that defy interpretation.

The Jensen's gallery hosts a small exhibition by one of their prominent artists from America. Winston Roeth does not create metaphor. His is a completely abstract art.

He simply shows joy in colour. To make his colour monumental and lasting, he paints saturated hues on uniformly sized slabs of slate. The stone provides a textured surface and a sense of permanence.

Each slab is uncompromisingly painted with a single rich colour.

The slabs are assembled in combinations which makes the colours chime with each other, sometimes in unexpected ways. The outstanding work is a tall arrangement called Totem.

At the galleries

What: The Wonder of Existence by Herb Foley

Where and when: Orexart, Khartoum Place, to February 28

TJ says: An exhibition full of colour and light that makes the forest, animals and people an ode to life in growth and change.

What: Transcryption by et al.

Where and when: Michael Lett, 2/852 Great North Rd, to March 19 TJ says: A huge menacing installation filled with noise and structures touched with blood red and an iron cell showing an animated film with flashes of philosophic thought.

What: New Paintings by Winston Roeth

Where and when: Jensen Gallery, cnr McColl and Roxburgh Sts, Newmarket, to March 19

TJ says: Puritan American abstract art of pure colour made monumental by carefully selected slabs of slate.

Check out your local galleries