Martin Basher: The Spectacular Fall
21 April to 17 May 2008
Starkwhite is pleased to present The Spectacular Fall
by New York-based New Zealand artist Martin Basher, from 21 April
to 17 May 2008.
For the past several years, Basher's practice has investigated
the way notions of utopia, desire and the sublime are embedded in
images in contemporary visual culture - through direct pictorial
representation and through associative connection. In the work in
this show he continues this investigation with a suite of five
paintings that present an arcadian yet acidic vision of nature,
where lush forest and torrential waterfalls are painstakingly
rendered in paint with the heightened photoshop color of amateur
digital photography, real estate advertisement, or motivational
'inspiration' posters ubiquitous in corporate back-corridors
worldwide. Bathing his paintings in this surreal emerald glow,
Basher resists a read of the work as mere aesthetic 'landscape,'
and instead calls attention to the constructed nature of 'nature,'
raising the question of the economies of ideology, politics and
commerce that are embedded in depictions of the natural
sublime.
While the work owes a pointed debt to the highly symbolic
landscapes of the American Hudson River School painters and the
German Existentialists, the contemporary photographic source
material Basher draws from acutely empty the images of specifically
codified meaning in favor of a flattened field characteristic of
contemporary commercial image production. There is a quality of the
generic in the waterfalls and forests he presents, images culled
from W.O.F. shop calendars and ambient 'falling waterfall pictures'
found in discount import bargain shops. Stripped of specificity
while still strongly conveying the generalised idea of the natural
sublime, the images wryly invite the affixion of meaning by each
individual viewer.
"Being dependant on the viewer, these landscapes are in equal
measure proof of god's mystery to one, a temple to evolution for
another, the backdrop to outdoor sport activities, or truck ads, or
rally-car races to a third. They are tied up in politics and
religion and our understanding of the world generally, but they
have no inherent message. Straight landscape is passive imagery,
mute, abstract in a sense, malleable to whatever the viewer wants
to apply to it. The use of a degree of straight landscape painting
in this show is with view to allowing this passive relationship,
while the sources of the images, the calendars and such, impart a
degree of honesty to the enterprise by dint of their common and
widely distributed origins." -Martin Basher 2007
Currently a LeRoy Neiman Print Fellow, Basher has been studying
at the Masters of Fine Art Program at Columbia University in New
York for the last two years, where he will present his graduating
thesis exhibition in May 2008. He will participate in the Emerging
Artist Fellowship Exhibition at Socrates Sculpture Park in New York
in September, and will commence teaching at both Columbia
University in New York and at the summer programme of the Art
Institute of Chicago at Oxbow, Michigan, this June.
Located in New Zealand on Auckland's Karangahape Road,
Starkwhite presents a programme of artists' projects, solo shows,
independently curated exhibitions and occasional forays into new
music and other interdisciplinary practices. Starkwhite also
represents artists from New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific
Rim.
For further information on the exhibition, or images, please
contact the gallery.
Starkwhite
510 Karangahape Road, Auckland, New Zealand
Tel. 64 9 3070703
Monday to Friday: 11.00am to 6.00pm
Saturday: 11.00am to 5.00pm
starkwhite@starkwhite.co.nz
www.starkwhite.co.nz
