Brent Hallard in Lavender Strike Exhibition at Conny Dietzschold Gallery
Aesthetically our world is a place of contradictions. In some locations space is increasing. Others are becoming more claustrophobic. Some cultures create streamlined, futuristic built worlds. Others barely manage to maintain their slapdash environment. Resources and circumstances play some role in a culture’s aesthetic choices. But humans also possess aesthetic instincts. Something guides us toward order or randomness. Abstract art plays a powerful role in the conversation about space and aesthetics. Ideas about how space is managed, ordered, manipulated or left alone are intrinsic to abstraction. By confronting these concepts, we confront ourselves. Since opening in 1989, Conny Dietzschold Gallery has contributed to this conversation by examining contemporary tendencies in concrete, constructive and conceptual art. Opening 21 June at their Sydney location with new works from Brent Hallard and Edgar Diehl, their upcoming exhibition Lavender Strike offers fresh aesthetic insights when we need them most.
Brent Hallard
Australian-born Brent Hallard splits his time between Japan and the US. He teaches at the San Francisco Art Institute and the California College of the Arts. His work utilizes a Minimalist aesthetic to explore notions of space, form and perception. His iconographic imagery is on one hand geometric and recognizable. On the other hand the optical elements of the works create illusionary phenomena that can alter a viewer’s experience of elements like surface and depth. Hallard has been represented by IdeelArt since 2016.
For Lavender Strike, Hallard has contributed works that confront the concepts of line, structure and space. The pieces feature brightly colored frontal surfaces mounted on aluminium honeycomb supports that are then mounted to the wall. The unpainted edges of the supports enhance the three-dimensional qualities of the objects. They extend out from the wall, bringing attention to the architectural space surrounding the pieces and creating a conversation between interior and exterior space. The optical “cubes of illusion” create a sense of the uncanny, while the visual brush strokes convey the presence of the artist’s hand, grounding the viewer’s experience and encouraging contemplation of personality and process.
Edgar Diehl - MSE VII, 2012, Acrylic on aluminium, 80 x 78 x 6 cm.
Edgar Diehl
The German artist Edgar Diehl’s creates multi-dimensional relief objects that use painted surfaces and three-dimensional space to confront issues of perspective, color, space and line. His woks are influenced by Cubist expressions of space-time and form, Op-Art aesthetics and Concrete and Constructivist concepts. The form of Diehl’s aesthetic objects interacts with light and perceptions in such a way that line, color and space seem to constantly evolve.
By incorporating dimensional folds into the surfaces of his works, Diehl re-contextualizes the art object’s relationship to the exhibition space, while also offering viewers a multitude of contemplative viewpoints. The objects assert concrete notions of relativity and perspective while also offering abstract meditations on formal elements of the aesthetic experience.
Lavender Strike is on view from 21 June through 30 July at Conny Dietzschold Gallery, 99 Crown Street, Sydney, Australia.
Featured Image: Brent Hallard - GONG (red, blue), 2016, Acrylic on honeycomb aluminium, 52.5 x 61.5 cm.
