BRUSH AND MATRIX
Oct 7 to Nov 4, 2023
“A matrix is something from which you make another image.”
(Chuck Close, p14, Chuck Close Processes and Collaboration, Terrie Sultan, Prestel, Munich 2014)
In conversation, Hayson, Totman, Li Hong and HeMas Zhang discussed the use of the key words for the title of this exhibition.
Of the first word ‘brush’, they have understood the intrinsically close link that in their different techniques, the aspect of hand movement, the gesture, essentially begins the process and provides the mediation between concept and canvas or block.
The second, ‘matrix’ is in recognition that a conceptual process must begin at a point of stimulus and thereafter with techniques and materials. This is a three-way dance, choreographed between the almost unconscious mind, the hand gesture and the surface onto which materials are applied. Once learned, this dance is both deliberate and intuitive, involving the whole movement as well as the mind.
More universally, the term matrix intrinsically indicates a plan or formula, a guiding mission allowing personal content and narrative to be overlaid. For these artists, the matrix is a fundamental point of connection, providing the building blocks for both printmaking and painting.
Despite developing their craft in completely diverse backgrounds and working with various techniques, these artists find themselves unified in their understanding of the importance of the gesture. This has linked these artists in fundamentally definable ways. It becomes a scaffold upon which they structure their own distinctive oeuvre. Such formalism provides thoughtful inquiry, informed by immersion in the natural world as well as codes embedded in the shapes and forms of the landscape, the fleeting glimpse of the touch of light, turning seasons.
Significantly, the influence of the natural environment has resulted in quite unrepresentational images; in the immediacy of the gesture, the materiality of the print and the spontaneity of expression, they have created abstract works.
Despite the fact that the abstract is both nonfigurative and nonrepresentational, it still conveys meaning, like any other communication. It creates the formal framework for its content and of references which the audience reconstructs or recreates in an act of interpretation. Abstraction has the power to dismantle traditional structures of understanding whilst simultaneously expressing individual experience. Most significantly, abstraction is a language for the indefinable.
Traditional printmaking is defined as those works made by means of a separate printing surface (or “matrix”, i.e. an etching plate, stone, woodblock or stencil) that is interposed between the artist’s hand and the final image. Both Hayson and Totman use printmaking techniques in their practice.
Angela Hayson Broadmere Station, NT (2018) multi woodblock print on Japanese Kozo paper, 50x170cm.
Hong Li, Spring is in the Air (2023) oil on canvas , 180 x 120cm.
Andrew Totman Level Light (2023) multi plate with chine colle 66.5x 50cm
Exhibiting in both China and Australia, HeMas Zhang is an artist working multi-disciplinary areas including conceptual photography and painting.
HeMas Zhang Mountain and Sea Lament no.2 (2022) mixed media on canvas 122x198cm
Hong Li has been exhibiting in Australia, China and internationally since 2007. Now living and working in Sydney, Hong Li’s background also includes techniques of woodblock printing as well as painting.
In an era of constant politization of Visual Arts it is refreshing to see a group of artists whose aspirations appear to be their investigations of the natural world. These artists are all very much ‘of the present’, offering insights into personal experiences in their interactions with the land. The semantic potential of the gestural expression is inherent in the abstract quality of these images. The audience reacts with immediate emotional response because abstraction transcends words. It articulates the ineffable, the inexpressible.
————— Michelle Watts
September, 2023