Exhibitions
Auckland
MICHAEL DUNN
MILAN MRKUSICH New Work
Where to now for Mrkusich, Auckland's senior abstract painter? It is nearly ten years since he painted the first of his 'corner' pictures, canvases of predetermined format. Their central field of colour, closed by triangles in each corner, has become almost a hall mark of the artist. And the 'corners' are still much in evidence in the Gallery Data show of New Work.
To be exact, 7 out of 9 are 'corners'. 2, though, are different. 3 Zones, 1975, and 4 Zones, Dark, 1976, are made up of separate canvases placed side by side and framed together to make one work. Each of the zones is painted in one tone - in these examples tones of grey. Their appeal for Mrkusich is clear enough. Now that he has released his painting from any kind of drawing, he wants to be able to paint with the utmost freedom. By varying the tonal, or colour ranges, of each separate canvas in the zones, Mrkusich gets the structure supplied by the corners in his earlier series.
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| Milan Mrkusich at The Gallery Data |
Potentially it's inviting. It seems to answer the question: what happens when you remove the corners? - a question always in the back of the mind previously. And, true, you do experience release from the pressure of those corner clips. Yet, it is at a price. For the rectangular divisions are somehow too well-known to allow any surge of excitement. Even in this country the zones are not a new idea - Driver, for example, used the same 'real' divisions in his painted reliefs of 1972. Despite Mrkusich's colouristic sensitivity, the final product is less distinctive than before, if not less successful. It may, of course, not be a case of zones versus corners. The two can co-exist, and do, in the Data show.
What of the new corner pictures themselves? No surprises there. But the zone idea casts some light on them. In the Gallery Data you could see how a group of 4 or 5 can work together in a serial fashion. Given the common format; given, too, the same proportions, it was easy to make connections between works hung side by side, and on opposite walls. Where the colour contrasts were most intense, especially between the brilliant Painting (blue), 1976, and Painting (red), 1976, the fields of colour seemed to flare out at one another across the gallery. The experience of being caught in a visual cross-fire was unsettling but highly stimulating.
That might have been an unintended effect. Yet the size of the large works is such, around human height, that the encounter with colour in a physical sense is very real. At close range, you seem to be enveloped, saturated with colour. It spreads out. The total format is lost. You go it alone without guidelines. You don't look at these paintings so much as react to their undeniable presence.
Originally published in Art New Zealand 6 June/July 1977