Art Blart

Friday November 7th 2008

Six luminous oil and acrylic paintings by Darren Wardle greeted viewers in the front gallery at Nellie Castan in South Yarra. In his apocalyptic fractured pop colored landscapes objects elide, disintegrate and vanish into thin air. Buildings, empty screens and advertising hoardings become the target of lost innocence, a metaphor for the dis-ease and disintegration of consumer society, a portent of things to come.

The titles of the paintings (such as ‘Tipping Point’, ‘Faultline’ and ‘Slanted’) perfectly describe the conceptual themes explored in the work. Slinks of dripping paint pour down the canvas, canvases are cut in three through the use of fractured planes like a double exposure in photography and vegetation becomes purple and white, mutated and x-rayed. Some of the paint almost has a crystalline nature to it’s surface, a ‘surface tension’ that contrasts with flat gradated areas of color in the backgrounds, as though the world is solidifying, cracking and about to fall apart.

An excellent show that is well hung: so many exhibitions have too many objects, too much noise crowding the walls. Here the work is given space to breathe and live and looks all the better for it. Highly recommended.

M Bunyan

 
Exhibition dates: November 7th – November 29th 2008

Nellie Castan Gallery
12 River Street
South Yarra 3141
03 9804 7366

Opening hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 12 – 5pm

Nellie Castan website