DANIEL LERGON – MULTIMONO

The title combines the latin word multi and the greek word mono. Although this sounds like a contradiction, Lergon manages to create his new paintings within this opposition. He generates his paintings out of one pigment but he perfectly understands how to use the whole shades of the phtalocyanine green pigment so that his complex compositions on the canvases vary from shimmering light green all the way through to a dark velvety, almost black tone.

Even though the reduction to a single color could be considered as restriction, looking at Lergon’s paintings this self-imposd limitation opens up a concentrated and focused way of painting. Using a smooth and monochrome picture plane, he emphasizes artistc gestures such as the brush-stroke style, the addition and removal of color with a scraper, the modulation of color density. These result in abstract formations and iridescent surfaces that appear to be three-dimensional.
Associations with paintings having been painted en verdaille come to ones mind. Like the better known Grisailles – a term for a painting created entirely with shades of grey – the so-called Verdaille describes paintings in green and has its roots in the 12th century, as a painting tradition used in Cistercian monasteries. While in former times rich coloring was prohibited, Lergon uses this limitation to show the wide color spectrum of the phtalocyanin green pigment and therefore draws attention to the surprising complexitiy within the reduction.

Exhibition runs through to October 15th, 2016

Galerie Christian Lethert
Antwerpener Straß 4
50672 Cologne
Germany

www.christianlethert.com

ANTHONY WHITE – CROSSING THE RUBICON

By merging contemporary forms of urban landscape and his Australian heritage across disciplines of drawing, painting, and collage the artist creates works often characterised by an awareness of surface and a preoccupation with the engagement of physicality and the found object. In his new body of work, Crossing the Rubicon, White continues to excavate ideas sourced from defining moments in history and their intersection with current global socio-political issues, to inform his contemporary image making practice. The exhibition explores collision points of the effects of modernism, war and globalisation.

The title Crossing the Rubicon draws from an important moment in the history of Western civilization, when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon river in Italy in 49AD and changed the genesis of modern Europe. Metaphorically White draws from this epoch of history in relation to the current global refugee crises, reflecting impacts in the artist’s current home, Europe, and contrasting this with the quieter crisis in his native Australia with its off-shore detention centres on the Pacific islands of Manus and Nauru.
In the work Sanguine (Manus) the Australian policy of immigration is scrutinised. Its Pacific ‘solution’ to processing of refugees is proposed as a national tragedy and international embarrassment, and an inhumane series of ongoing incidents for Australia in an international context.

Opposite – Sanguine (Manus), 2016

Exhibition runs through to September 30th, 2016

Nanda/Hobbs Contemporary
Level 1, 66 King Street
NSW 2000
Sydney
Australia

nandahobbs.com