The galleries: Killeen gets you thinking

By T.J. McNAMARA

Art is full of polarities, abstract and realist, classic and romantic, heart and head. One such contrast is between the sharp outline that defines things exactly and the soft, cloudy form which leaves much to the imagination.

In a rich week of art in Auckland, we can study both.

The sharpest definition is found in the work of Richard Killeen at the Ivan Anthony Gallery until August 28. His long experience has culminated in highly individual images that speak tellingly of modern life.

Each element in these works is sharply outlined because they are computer-generated images scanned, stored, coloured and rearranged. Furthermore, they are contained with precision - within the shape of a jar as if they were bottled peaches, or on the pages of a ringbound book as if they were a work of reference.

What do they reference? The title of the exhibition is City Living and the images are mostly people and buildings, skyscrapers and houses, pipes and wall, with here and there an expanse of sky.

One feature that is part of the city is the presence of birds. Amid all the sharp-edged construction and objects they fly as free spirits.

The pictures are constructed as tightly as any complex formal abstraction. In Behind City Windows, the whole view is set behind strong window frames and the space beyond is defined as a vast basilica. Between the windows and the apse a whole world exists, full of memories and emblems, a sphinx, a bust of Napoleon overshadowed by a young man out of an underwear catalogue.

There is room for a large female figure contemplating with some agitation this created world. There is room for fossils and a cat with bright turquoise eyes that sparks the colour of the whole composition.

Colour is one of the unifying factors and Yellow City takes its whole key from a Caterpillar bulldozer. The image is full of the power of modern machinery. This yellow city which reaches up to a beautiful skyscape finds room for the Chrysler Building, a searchlight and a seagull flying free. Some of the pictures are very still and some spectacular, such as The Engineer's Dive. He launches himself into his dream of concrete columns, pipes and skytowers. Their hardness is contrasted with his delicate and colourfully patterned shirt.

In the past, Killeen might well have been accused of being excessively dry and withdrawn. This exhibition is shot through with fun and wit as well as little jokey references to his past work. Every work provokes thought and can be explored with delight.

Another show that is sharp-edged because it is, for the most part, cut from thick plates of marine-grade stainless steel is Go Figure by Richard Thompson at the Gow Langsford Gallery until August 21.

He is an artist whose work was once completely abstract but now he cuts figures of men and women, families and trees, out of sheets of steel and turns the parts at right angles. As you walk around these sculptures there is a constantly changing polarity of positive and negative, yet each part is related to the other.

These big sculptures work because of the splendid glitter of the highly polished surface ground into the steel and because of their considerable size as well as their seminal, avatar-like subjects.

There are small infelicities, such as where a foot does not quite touch the floor of the sculpture and has to have a rectangle of steel under it. The small version of these tremendous works are appealing but naturally lack the force of the full-scale sculptures.

Unusually, this is an exhibition of two styles and mediums. One is the successful culmination of development and the other, however cleverly conceived, is a beginning. In the second part, wall sculptures are made by cutting shapes out of mirror-glass and carefully assembling them to make an image. The lines defining the picture are marked only by the cut edges of the glass.

Hard-edged it may be, but it is hard to know precisely what statement is being made and what tone is intended.

The soft, suggestive image where the imagination is given full play is strongly exemplified by the work of Thomas Elliot at the Lane Gallery until August 13.

His work - large gatherings of indeterminate figures defined by light falling on their heads and shoulders as they push forward from a vast, dark background - suggests narrative and a religious ritual.

What story and what religion is never clear, though the groupings are visually powerful. They suggest association with traditional subjects such as The Last Judgement or The Death of the Virgin or Christ Preaching to the People, but never quite fit.

Your imagination is given freedom but certainly there is death, sacrifice and mortality.

In Elliot's previous exhibition the figures were ranked in lines parallel to the picture's surface. Here they stack up in great crowds and the effect is more powerful.

In Per Ardua ad Astra, bodies lie on slabs. In Entity, groups are praying, consulting, discussing.

Only the paintings centred on heads being carved or dragged fall between being too specific and not quite clear enough.

For the rest these deeply emotionally involved hordes make fascinating, if disturbing, paintings as their ambiguities stimulate the imagination.