The Reserve is a solo presentation of new works by Ōtautahi based artist Oliver Perkins. Practical investigations have enabled the idiosyncratic development of a range of physical forms, surfaces and motifs. This series of paintings is the result of playful acts of adding or removing media and material.
Colour abounds. With Perkins’ wall paintings, large, dense monochromatic masses are framed in architecture. Within a selection of insert paintings, treated canvas surfaces involve excerpts of larger fields, so that vari-coloured planes are present simultaneously. Pieces of potency are brought together in order to create interplay of gesture, technique, pattern and hue.
Things come together, a relationship forms and develops between: one painting and another, projection and recession, absence and presence… between a specific built environment and selected artworks.
Sometimes there is a reticence, to keep something in reserve is to hold something back, whether it be canvas that has been cut away, the paint brush lifted up, a treated surface left unpainted or a painted block which scrolls, unfurls itself and stops.
This is Oliver Perkins’ second solo exhibition with Michael Lett gallery.
Visit Michael Lett gallery to learn more about this exhibition.