Theo Schoon & Frenemies

On the longest wall of the biggest upstairs space at City Gallery Wellington, there are five relatively large paintings. They each have a white ground with lines, and occasional patches or shapes, of blue, black, green and red. Pared-back abstractions, plenty of white wall between them―a monument to a modernist master? If the first temptation is to evaluate the paintings, they might disappoint, appearing somehow thin, rudimentary, undercooked, although the surfaces are layered and textured, and the compositions are intriguing, not formulaic. For me, this slightness is part of the charm. It was courageous of Schoon to exhibit them at the New Vision Gallery in Auckland in 1965, because at that time, in New Zealand, there was little to no abstract painting with so little in it (and it is little wonder they did not sell and the critical reception was mixed).

The curators of , Schoon biographer Damian Skinner and City Gallery Wellington curator Aaron Lister, pull off a spacious re-enactment of Schoon’s 1965 solo show, assembling not just pictorial works but also carved and uncarved gourds. It is an opportunity to eyeball the artworks artworks: the impressive ― (1964), with its intricate spatial games and beguiling paint slurry (reminiscent of the boiling mud in Schoon’s Rotorua photographs, represented in a nearby (1965), one of the Kees Hos-influenced relief prints, deliciously dynamic in hot pink, like a ball of wool unravelling inside a cherry pie. But venturing into the other rooms of the exhibition will quickly dispel the impression that this is a standard retrospective of discrete fine art objects from the artist’s . What emerges is an exhibition more attuned to how Schoon worked.