Auckland
Robbie Fraser Focus Fever
Two Rooms, 6 October-4 November
MICHAEL DUNN
Geometric abstraction is a style of painting that has a relatively small but distinguished place in New Zealand contemporary practice. Its best-known local exponent is arguably the late Gordon Walters (1919-1995). Originating in Europe, its lineage has been traced back to Mondrian and his followers in the early twentieth century.
Robbie Fraser’s show Focus Fever can be seen as a contemporary take on geometric abstraction by an artist who knows its history and is aware that its heyday was back in the 1960s and 1970s, most famously when op art became fashionable. His term Masculine Steampunk in one of his titles for the paintings in the show can be read as a witty allusion to the anachronistic feel of these small canvases and their spare vocabulary of forms. Set on the severe white walls of the Two Rooms upstairs gallery, the paintings can appear like a controlled demonstration of how a few hardedge forms enlivened by some vibrant colours can make a series of paintings, all different but all related. Being all similar in size and format reinforces this idea.
In the tradition of geometric abstraction, the painted forms are hard edge, with few signs of their making. The artist has applied the colour flat with little indication of brushing or revision and the forms and colours have been resolved in advance with a separation between conception and execution. Most of the forms appear to have been ruled and measured and the tonal contrast between one form and another is strong and includes the dramatic juxtaposition of black and white. This produces an illusion of space with one form seemingly projecting, or receding, despite our awareness that they are all on the same flat canvas support. There is, as with Walters, an alternation in reading the forms depending on which are given priority as figure, or ground.
With this kind of art, the game is to keep things fluid and not to stabilise our perceptual experience. No one reading is final, much less definitive. Fraser’s titles seem to endorse this idea; for example, Failing Containment or Focus Fever. We are encouraged not to focus on one reading or contain the image in a predetermined, final position. Fraser’s titles themselves are subversive in that they are not restricted to giving the paintings serial identity. By encouraging associations and personal interpretation, the artist enlivens the viewing experience. This helps us avoid the worthy but dull aspects of so-called zombie formalism where all sense of discovery has been lost and the works become an academic exercise. The intense windowless upper gallery at Two Rooms and the relentless hang did not allow the quirky vibrance of the paintings to fully emerge. Seeing Solar Allergy alone, by request, in the adjacent workroom with natural light gave a fresh look to the image. Viewed as a whole, Focus Fever is an accomplished and thoughtful show enlivened by irreverence and touches of humour.
Auckland
Anto Yeldezian Monument Valley
Coastal Signs
16 November-27 January
SAMUEL TE KANI
Anto Yeldezian’s is a collection of new work that speaks to
