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Arts
SIMON BLOND
WeekendExtra The West Australian
Saturday 4 December 2004
Simon
Gevers and Jocelyn Gregson each have a solo show at Dusseldorf. Their
paintings on the surface couldn't be more different.
Gevers' show is called I Like Painting. It's a commitment to the pure
aesthetic that Greenberg famously claimed for abstract painting in the
1940s. These canvases have no meaning, no reference to the outside world.
Like music, they exist for the enjoyment of the delight they give to
the senses.
Most of the works consist of a number of careful vertical strokes of
a brush filled with a diluted paint over a
contrasting underpaint. In White .Happiness, for example, there are
two underpaintings in orange then blue. Over
this, the vertical brush strokes are in a diluted white. The result
is quite beautiful.
The blues and oranges are glimpsed here and there in muted form through
a white veil of decreasing density.Although essentially without direct
- outside reference, I couldn't help being aware of associations on
a less conscious level, connections to mists and snowstorms as well
as to the symbolic meanings of milk and sperm.
Numbers 1-6 in the catalogue hang beside each other with colour contrasts
that are too sweet so that the individual works start to seem merely
decorative. This is something Gevers needs to watch.
In his more subdued works, however, he is an painter that I enjoyed
immensely.
Jocelyn
Gregson's show is called Discipline. In it, she uses only black paint
on a white, gesso, prepared surface to emulate the effects of photocopying.
This is a double denial, both of the sensuality
of colour and the personal mark of individuality.The austerity of means
also contrasts with her subject matter, flowers. These are painted with
a slow, meticulous method from deep resonating blacks to thin washes
leaving as white highlights the untouched gesso ground.
Discipline XII explores the male principle, fore grounding the phallic
arum lilly against the anthers of an open flower and the faint suggestion
of grasses emerging from velvety, black depths.Discipline XI is more
female, showing the soft folds of an open rose.
There is a still beauty in Gregson's work. In spite of the austerity
of a meticulous technique and a total absence of colour,
there is also a sensuality which is enhanced by the discipline of restraining
it.
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