A Measured Moment of Being
Born out of Collective - a series of watercolours exhibited in Auckland
and Wellington in 2002, Browne’s recent technical and thematic concerns
have focused on achieving the kind of fragility inherent in
watercolour, in the otherwise dense robust medium of oils.
This new approach to a well-applied medium reflects Browne’s latest
development in his continual exploration of how the artist might
identify and represent visually the innermost and subtle, yet vital and
powerful workings of the human being. "My paintings reflect my
endeavours to make sense in visual terms of cerebral sensations,
conscious and unconscious drives, and the complexities of the human
condition," Browne states.
Long driven by a fascination for the underlying paradoxes that
give shape to life – forms of presence and absence, of potency and
vulnerability – Browne has once again created testaments to mortal
elements such as power and fragility. There is an increased intensity
at work in these new paintings; a meditative stillness inspired by the
watercolours but not seen before in Browne’s oil works. It comes as a
result of not only the disappearance of the previous calligraphic
marks, but also of the artist’s ever-firmer commitment to the essence
of abstraction: to paintings being about the act of painting itself,
and thereby speaking about life.
In so doing, Browne explicitly harks back to the Abstract
Expressionists of the mid twentieth century – Newman, Pollock, Rothko –
celebrated for the grandeur with which they made their marks and the
terrifyingly beautiful moment of individual confrontation that was
inspired by those marks in the viewer. Like the 1950s’ abstractions,
Browne’s works have gotten bigger - many of them painted to, and
greater than human scale - and invite an "encounter" with the viewer.
Standing before them, we are beckoned (and/or repelled) to consider
ourselves in the mirror-like vertical band, while the slightly tipped
horizontal band provides an unsettling context, as a landscape in flux
or a slightly askew window edge or doorframe might. Furthermore, and as
is Brownes’ forte, the (increasingly confrontational) combinations of
colours serve to furnish our encounters with atmospheres from the
unnerving to the sublime, and therein, often the provocative.
Those familiar with his work will note that increasingly in Browne, the
quiet easily turns into disquiet, the simplicity into uncertainty, and
the stillness into shrillness. For while relieving, there is also
something obsessive in the search for a moment of "being here"; of
Dasein. Indeed, seen as a whole, the new series suggests a long
searching journey marked only by a row of asymmetrical crosses, readily
interpreted as signs of emergency, location or spiritual
transcendentalism.
|
