Stand close to Ingo Meller’s paintings and you can almost hear their rasp. Each brushstroke is a strident expression of concision, intent and resolve. His predominantly wide brush comes fully loaded to this generous linen field, discharging its consignment in urgent staccato gestures that are utterly liberated from any obligation to advertise or flaunt their expedition.
These are deliberate gestures made to counter the obvious charisma that seduces many painters and vulnerable audiences. In fact, so unbridled by dramatic imperative, the initial sense one has is that this exchange between Meller and his raw linen is so fundamental that there is little room for us as participant. The dance feels binary by nature and how we might successfully ‘cut in’ is unclear.
But what Meller does give us between these rasping notes is space, plenty of it. As articulated as the spare composition appears, the field, particularly with its open edges, offers a symbolically boundless territory, emancipated from the restrictions and orthodoxies of folded stretchers and authoritative frames. In this sense alone, they are more available.
Given their binary character one might assume that Meller’s paintings are genuinely reductive but the open zones they operate in feel generous and expansive. This notion of space, expanding ever outwards kept inviting us in.
The clear complicity of painter, brush, linen and pigment feels so materially evident that seeking to graft symbolism on to them reveals more about us that them… and yet… on that hot Leipzig day we sat surrounded by them like a giant frieze where the rhythms and cadence within and between each work simultaneously jousted and gelled, the paintings felt deliciously free of dogma. With the manifesto set aside Meller has been able to make paintings whose raspy voice has a new clarity and insistence.
Meller will present work on the Auckland gallery early in 2025.