Art plays tricks on the mind

POINT OF VIEW: Crow's wall works are designed to physically and optically interact with the viewer. Photo/supplied

Well-known Tauranga-based painter Graham Crow will hold a solo exhibition of interactive works and installations at The Zeus Gallery this month.

Crow does not paint pictures of things; rather he is a maker of special events for walls. His early work was figurative, including portraits and nudes, and, although he still uses paint as a component, his work of the past 12 years has a very different purpose.

Crow's wall works are designed to physically and optically interact with the viewer. For example, some pieces are best experienced by walking past the work.

The pigmentation on the surface of these pieces is so encrusted that certain colours can only be seen when viewed from particular positions in the room. The colours change as one moves. In other work, a suite of coloured squares invites the viewer to physically handle and rearrange their orientation, and their location, relative to their neighbours.

Pure abstraction rejects illusionistic painting. Crow's version of abstraction does not. He pairs pure flat areas of colour with subtle tonal spaces that become almost photographic in their evocation of, for example, rippled sand (Graham lives by a tidal estuary) or the gloss on wet stone. The pleasures of strictly divided spaces and highly considered proportions are signature, but equally there is a trickster at work.

Often the eye is teased by the illusion of deep spaces, where deft use of airbrush creates faux shadows, and elsewhere oversaturated and nuanced pigments build into seductive natural/unnatural surfaces. Crow's colour palette is also tricky - it runs from earthy Tauranga harbour-side ochre to fluoro chemical glows.

Crow is breaking some of the rules of his art-historical predecessors and feeling his way to his own new ones. His key concern is with the active engagement of the viewer, through both optical effects and through the element of physical change that treats the painting as an object.

As a 20-year-old, Crow lived through the adventurous cultural time that gave us Op (optical) Art. Crow's current work can be glimpsed in the swinging light of that period, despite his anchor in the universe of solid geometries.

The opening event is open to the public and will be held on October 15 from 5.30pm till 8.30pm. The exhibition is open from October 16 to 29. Gallery doors are open 10am until 4pm.

the fine print
What: Second Nature - Graham Crow solo exhibition.
Where: The Zeus Gallery, 106 11th Avenue
When: October 16-29