Starkwhite is pleased to present
Material Candour, a group show by Gavin Hipkins (NZ), Richard Maloy (NZ) and Daniel von Sturmer (AUS), from 28 June to 22 July 2016. The three installations in the exhibition foreground process as a core component of the works, not just the work behind the works. The measure of these pieces is a function of the handwork they occasion as well as what they call forth.
Drawing on the experimental approaches of the 1920s avant-garde, Gavin Hipkins arranges polystyrene balls and rings on light-sensitive paper and then exposes then to light to make his photograms. The subject matter is typically banal and pointedly inconsequential, but repeated, massed and marshaled, the cumulative effect is monumental signposting his interest in failed utopias. Curator Robert Leonard says: “Hipkins’ retro-modernist arrangements hark back to a time when photography’s new ways of seeing were optimistically linked to a new view of the modern world aligned with both progressive social programmes (Rodchenko and Moholy-Nagy) and fascist ones (Riefenstahl).“
In
Material Candour Hipkins presents
The Port (2000), a 12-part work of photograms, each measuring 760 x 1000 mm. Another 32-part work from this series,
The Coil (1998), is currently showing in
Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery.
From a distance Richard Maloy’s
Yellow Structure appears to be a solid, monumental form – a rock-like sculpture that is formal and minimal in nature. It draws viewers in, where on closer inspection it reveals its humble, degradable construction of common industrial materials – cardboard, tape and paint. The hand of the artist is apparent in the wonky construction, DIY taping and slapdash paint job. All visible structural components are wrapped in cardboard and painted so the entire piece, even the posts and struts, appear to be hand-made of light-weight cardboard – a monumental mass with no apparent signs of support, that could collapse or fall apart.
Yellow Structure (Variation) is an upside down version of Maloy’s sculpture presented in the Encounters section of Art Basel Hong Kong in March this year, which was curated by Alexie Glass-Kantor. Rather than presenting a finished work in
Material Candour, Maloy will continue to develop his sculpture throughout the duration of the exhibition.
The artist wishes to acknowledge the generous support of the Asia New Zealand Foundation and Creative New Zealand, delivered through the Asia/New Zealand Co-commissioning Fund, with the presentation of Yellow Structure at Art Basel Hong Kong and Starkwhite.
Daniel von Sturmer’s video
small world (chalk drawing) begins with a black screen. A moment later a hand appears at the bottom of the screen holding a piece of chalk, which traces a not-quite-perfect circle on the rotating black ground. The hand pulls away and the circle continues to rotate, then the hand reappears holding an eraser and the line soon disappears leaving a black screen, ending as it began. As Tara McDowell observes: “von Sturmer’s videos connect to a longstanding tradition of drawing as studio practice, though here that very practice becomes the work, carefully composed and executed.”
The exhibition also includes small world (landscape painting) where multiple lines of white paint drip down from an unseen source, slowly coating the surface. Eventually the white paints covers its allotted area so completely “that it cedes its own materiality, so palpable as wet paint, in pure image,” says McDowell “It is testament to von Sturmer’s intuitive and deft touch with his medium that he makes us feel the materiality of the thing depicted, as if we could reach out and touch it even though we know it is an illusion.”
Daniel von Sturmer is represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne and we are grateful for their support for this exhibition.
Press release courtesy Starkwhite.