PLASTIC SOUL – AUCKLAND

Plastic Soul brings together paintings by artists whose work insinuates deliberate sonic qualities, qualities that appear to invite a broader sensory experience. Though it is unlikely that each painter sets out with synaesthetic ambitions, you do get the sense that assonance finds its way in somehow, and that these artists open the door for it.
 
The nature of the sonic undertones between each of these painters is clearly very different – from Knoebel’s glorious Be-Bop agitation to Delaere’s fierce, physical and jagged feedback – but each painting delivers an undeniable audible dimension – even if Umberg’s paintings in particular, approach statistical silence. 
 
The exhibition includes mesmerising new paintings by Mark Francis, one of which, Jericho will be accompanied by a composition by acclaimed British musician/composer Andy Cowton. Their collaboration speaks to the heart of Plastic Soul – where our perceptions are spliced together in a happy cocktail of sound and vision. These works/collaborations form part of a suite of works conceived by Patricia Bossio that span diverse musical genres.

Also included are major paintings by Hanns Kuniztberger, Erin Lawlor and Todd Hunter and whilst the energy, pitch and tempo couldn’t be more contrasting, any dissonance will feel temporary.

Kunitzberger’s paints “volume”, its rise and dissipation with a sensitivity and feeling that is magical. Pigment gathers like grains of sound so that the interior of the painting has an amplitude and tone that is elemental. At the paintings edges sound evaporates into a hushed zone.

I regularly think of Lawlor’s paintings are meteorological. There is a swirling tumult in the accomplished brushwork that leads us headlong into the tempest.  Of course, such wild conditions are measured as much by their sonic qualities as they are by their moisture and velocity. The momentum that Lawlor builds in her painting, the air pressure can be almost giddying. This sensation alone feels “inner ear” as much as optic.

Todd Hunter paintings often have a spikey electricity to the gesture. The brushwork turns fast, pivoting and dancing through chromatically charged fields. Hunter paints to an edgy soundtrack, much of his studio given over to the delivery of surround sound and that’s what the paintings convey – an enveloping version of quadrophonic sensation.

Fox Jensen McCrory & Fox Jensen are enormously grateful to the artists for their enthusiasm and support for the project and we wish to make special mention of Andy Cowton and Patricia Bossio whose collaboration on the composition for Mark Francis’s Jericho.

Andrew Jensen, November, 2022