Michael Dell’s paintings shift from subject to non-subject, from representation to abstraction, where both modes of visual discourse reveal an evident attention to materiality and the static tension between picture surface and picture depth.
Backlit Fields is a continuation of that studio practice.
This exhibition, consisting of predominately landscape work is based from an ongoing observation of certain locations from the rural outskirts of Whakatū Nelson, where he lives. These paintings are based on roadside views from the Moutere Highway and the Takaka Valley. Through photographing these locations and using the images as a reference point, he physically appropriates the camera’s gaze, reducing the images to a visual perception of a view, or scene, by painting them. Any formal relationship between the photograph and the painting becomes more disproportional through Dell’s studio process, in his thinking and choice of materials.
While these landscape paintings can seem to be grounded in that particular genre of art history, there is a present time ambivalence and everyday commonplace approach towards the chosen subjects that suggests a stronger interest in abstraction, rather than objective representation. The landscapes in Dell’s paintings are reduced to a single motif – where the subject sits within the processes and constructs of picture making.
Michael Dell graduated from Canterbury University School Of Fine Art in 1994. Since that time he has exhibited throughout New Zealand, internationally in Japan, and more recently in a solo show Distant Pictures in Berlin, Germany in 2024. Dell is a recipient of numerous awards, including two of New Zealand’s premier national drawing awards; the Cranleigh Barton Drawing Award in 1993, while in his final year at art school, and more recently the Parkin Drawing Prize in 2019. His work is held in various Public collections, including the Christchurch City Art Gallery / Te Puna o Waiwhetū, The University of Auckland / Waipapa Taumata Rau, The Suter Gallery / Te Aratoi o Whakatū and the Waikato Museum of Art and History / Te Whare Taonga o Waikato.
