KEY POINTS:
The impressive new exhibition by Gretchen Albrecht, at the Sue Crockford Gallery until May 24, contains no new departures in style or subject. Its title, Rose Gardens and the Deep Sea Swell, suggests the sources of her inspiration and, as always, the colour of her work is captivating.
The sweep and spontaneity of her brush-work is assured and expressive but it's the colour that gives these paintings particular force. The largest work, The Deep Sea Swell, is a hemisphere divided in two. The deep sea is invoked by an exceptionally rich dark blue on the right while something closer to the shore is suggested by the sea green on the left. The division in the centre is disconcertingly arbitrary but, on each side, there are great sweeping washes of surge and movement. They are as spontaneous as a wave and the background colour gives them emotional force.
There are also three of Albrecht's oval canvasses, each one named after a variety of rose and coloured accordingly. The rose background is marked by a gesture that curls in on itself, not quite a vortex but a folding that conveys growth. The depth of this soft movement is established by a sharply geometrical twig-green bar across the space.
Rectangular geometry rather than swirls make up another large painting, Threshold. This work is a rectangle within a long rectangle. The thick inner rectangle is dark and suggests a strong polarity. The two poles pull across a central space disturbed by vibrating lines of force. The charm is that the force, though strong, is also delicate, lilac, and shaded to mediate between the two areas of strong colour.
This is a small show, accompanied by a number of attractive prints which are colour-keyed to their titles. When so much current art is angular, awkward, mocking and ironic, this is a show that is simply beautiful.
By contrast with this symphonic work are two exhibitions of photo-realism that are, in their own way, quite startling. At Artspace, until the end of May, is a show by the prominent British artist Paul Winstanley. Photo-realism was a style born in the United States in the 1970s. It was an urban phenomenon and laid great emphasis on the bright exterior of vehicles, telephone boxes, buildings and signs. Winstanley belongs to the 21st century and, though the style is the same, his art encompasses a whole variety of subjects as well as the city scene. It moves into the countryside and to China, away from New York or California.
Winstanley's realism has a spin. When he does paint the city, he paints exactly and convincingly the tatty cost-efficient structures of institutional waiting rooms or the long perspectives of walkways.
Just how well he paints these things can be seen in a work called Blind which is a spare, geometrical vestibule closed at one end by a translucent Venetian blind. There is a variety of light playing over the space and, from even a short distance, it looks entirely like a large photograph. Close examination shows it is miraculously put together from touches of paint.
The virtuosity of this and other perspective interiors is matched by two paintings in something like a traditional Chinese manner that show mountains surrounded by mist. Other outdoor paintings with Chinese subjects are a crowd on top of a peak in On Bright Mountain.
The paintings that are most edgy and potent are TV Room 6 or Night Office 1. They speak of some of the bleaker aspects of contemporary life. When hideous colour is used to add to the acid tone as in the two big round paintings called Pod, the point seems overstressed.
With the Auckland Art Gallery partially out of action, it is good to see Artspace mounting a substantial show by a successful international artist.
The quality of Winstanley's work is more than matched by New Zealander Michael Hight who, some time ago, switched from his abstract work for a style of exact realism. His exhibition at the John Leech Gallery until May 23 uses the beehives that have been his motif in recent years and places them in a variety of upland landscapes. His virtuosity in the exact rendering of detail is particularly evident when he is dealing with weathered wood, the peeling paint on the hives, twisting wire, steel strapping and old fence posts. This capacity for exact detail extends to patterns of bare foliage. The patterns are stark and clear as he favours winter weather and excels on lingering traces of snow.
These paintings are tightly organised in composition and colour. The artist selects and weaves detail together to make a convincing scene, sometimes on a grand scale as in Karepehi. Even more impressive, though not quite as large, is Upper Parihaka Rd.
The curious spin is that there are beehives but no bees. Each hive in reality would be a system buzzing with life but each of these little bee colonies, some with a rock on top as a weight against fate and acts of God, take on the strange quality of a memorial. The individuality of these works lies not only in their autumnal colour and stillness but also in a melancholy quality that seems to pose questions about the passing of time.
