KEY POINTS:
Less is more was a dictum that had great power in art and architecture in the 20th century. That it has not entirely lost its appeal is made clear in Auckland this week in a series of exhibitions that are all about reduction.
The most extreme is the work of Julian Dashper at the Sue Crockford Gallery until December 16. It comes very close to being reductio ad absurdum.
On the wall are a series of canvasses - fine canvasses, coarse canvasses, stacked and layered canvasses - carefully stretched on frames and completely blank.
These are in many shapes: square, rectangular, diamond, big, small, primed in different ways. Panels are treated the same way.
This is conceptual art descended from Duchamp, a series of propositions about painting.
All these shapes are ready to take an image. You can put on them whatever your imagination suggests. There is even a long piece of stretcher on the wall which represents just one side of the back of an imagined painting too big to be shown in full. It is all so simple, so clever - and so dull.
The only high spot is a print of a colour field of yellow framed by a darker colour. When the young painter, aged 15, travelled to Auckland to see an exhibition of painting by van Gogh, the eight paintings did not much impress him, but the abstract design of the framed yellow on the back of the catalogue did and has remained with him.
What visual delight might be achieved on such blank rectangles with the simplest of means is beautifully demonstrated by Winston Roeth at the Jensen Gallery until Christmas.
This painter has a big reputation in Europe and most of his work is made up of a colour field framed around the edge by a contrasting or harmonising colour - like the print in the Dashper show, only on a much grander scale.
The only exception is a work on seven slate tiles ranged in a row, with each tile as a separate colour. The colours either bring out the topography of the surface of the tile, or the colour sinks into the tile and gives a feeling of depth.
The subtlety of these colours extends to one tile on the extreme right, which changes from a rich brown to a warm pink as you walk past.
The other works are all minimalist geometry - colour with a frame.
Loveliest of all is From this Moment On, which has a very soft brown field and an amber-shifting-to-orange frame that changes in tone depending on the incident light.
Within the utterly simple geometry of these paintings there is a captivating visual sensation equivalent to timbre in music.
Among these half dozen paintings there is only one that does not completely charm - Night Lighter. Its dark centre makes the yellow surround look murky, almost dirty, and denies it the simple power found elsewhere.
There is equally simple geometry in the work of J.S. Parker at the Edmiston Duke Gallery until December 22, but his surfaces are richly worked, mainly with the palette knife. Again it is the colour combinations that give force.
The idea that less is more is reinforced in the title of one of the most appealing works, Formerly Farmer Murray's Wheatfield.
Formerly, it would have showed the gold of the wheat and the blue of the sea, but now the wheat and the sea are left out and only the colour remains.
It is a work loaded with energy coming from the surface and richness of colour.
The same uncompromising reduction occurs in the delicious diptych Tussock and Rosehips.
In Parker's previous work a horizontal line often enabled paintings to be read as landscape, a solace mostly denied in this show, yet such paintings as For the Mountain Passes are vertical but totally convincing. Their depth indicates the maturity of Parker's long development.
Reduction can be dangerous. At the Milford Galleries there is an exhibition by Scott McFarlane, called Northliner, until December 23.
In the past the artist has done rich dark paintings of Northland in which he has managed to suggest the history and mythical presence of hills and valleys by means of dark atmospheric effects.
In this show he has simplified the hills into big simple shapes sitting on a horizon, sometimes crowned by an exotic tree and with a wisp of cloud looking like a disembodied spirit.
It makes for a bold effect yet the simplifications mean the shapes sit somewhere between a hill and a monument, but are too flat and reduced to be totally convincing.
Reducing things to plane geometry is not the only way to go - curves have their place.
In a colourful show at Vavasour Godkin Gallery until December 9, Terry Powell conjures from transparent plastic the most delightful still life sculptures: shoes, bottles, wine glasses, whose effect is enhanced by the curious replicating shadows cast on the wall.
The plastic is used brilliantly for the intense colour it has along its edges when it is lit from above.
