Freestanding neon sculpture

Paul Hartigan: The undrawn
Artis
7 October - 1 November 2009

In terms of Paul Hartigan’s career this Artis show of neon sculpture is a further development from the Revolution series of circular neon wall reliefs that he made in 2007. The seven works here continue the interest in unravelling knots of coloured light, but now instead of being spirals of several colours projecting out from opaque acrylic discs on the wall, Hartigan has made truly three-dimensional objects that are chunkily compact, and less flattened whorls.

These glowing clusters of cordlike light tumble onto the wooden floors of transparent boxes with acrylic walls. They average about 360 mm wide and look like record turntables with their high, cubed, transparent-but-tinted lids. The lid planes are not flush with the edges of the wooden ‘deck’ but recessed within.

The range of chroma is far more varied than what the images above suggest: some are whiter and icier for example, and others more varied in the temperature of their hue within each loosely poised, spiralling knot-like ball.

There about half a dozen visual variables you can think about when examining these sculptures. First of all, and most obviously, there is the range of chroma, the number of linked up colours within each twisting and buckling line cluster - the joined up sections of coloured or transparent glass within each unravelling nest.

Then there is the form of the configuration, the shape of the spiralling and reversing hovering line itself, the way it might change its alignment from vertical to diagonal, the density of its linear groupings like in a moving spring.

The tinted properties of the acrylic sheets also vary considerably. In one these are dark so that the core threads of the persimmon or orange lines glow menacingly, while their outer edges remain dark and fuzzy.

In many cases, as in the earlier Revolutions, Hartigan has drawn within the glowing line by scratching away parts of the coloured coatings he has applied to the glass tube - or exposing the spiralling transparent tube at its ends, near the caps covering the wiring that ignites the mainly argon (occasionally neon) vapour. Sometimes he incorporates the physical throbbing movement of the gas, so that it can be seen like a twisting worm at the unpainted ends, or subtly detectable within the pastel tube as a gentle pulse.

Often he plays with properties of reflection so that each work’s tumbling neon lines are repeated in diminishing and/or reversed sizes in the vertical acrylic sides, or as a soft muffled glow bounced below off the painted (or unpainted) floor of the box. These qualities in the tinted cubes knock back the sculptural aspects of the tubular forms, dematerialising them by flattening out the spatial and emphasising the linear. This makes the light less bodily, more ethereal and fragmented through repetition, paradoxically accentuating the volumetric properties of the acrylic cube – drawing attention to its flickering walls.

The main point though of Hartigan’s neon work is his love of chroma, the delight he has in manipulating intensely bright, coloured line. While these are also sculptures that provide spatial pleasures for those keen to look at them from different angles, the physicality of this sometimes intensely saturated, linear light provides wonder, even though neon now is dated technology. It doesn’t need to move to make you gasp, but you do (around each cube) if you wish to discover the pleasures of its looping forms - by visually disentangling their internal relationships. It’s a wonderful exhibition, and the best Hartigan show Auckland has had for many years.

Chromophile

Paul Hartigan: Chromophobia
Artis
17 September - 12 October 2008

Named after David Bachelor’s famous little book on the politics of colour, this is the first Hartigan solo show in Auckland for some time, and offers three varieties of work, all from recent projects shown out of town: four neon wall sculptures (‘Revolutions’); five digitally tweaked photographs printed on canvas (H-types); six plastic toy figures photographed and enlarged.

The Revolutions intrigue with their swirling spirals of knotted light, shiny circular plates, and muted reflections. As turning vectors, the glowing glass cords are a lot more complex than you initially realise, sometimes doubling back or with gaps, often with more pieces of tube or more colours than readily apparent. Often Hartigan creates counter-spirals by having thin black wiring wrapped around the tube ends. Or striations made on the pigment inside the glass tube. The smallest detail has been thoroughly considered.

The H-types combine painting, photography, sculpture and prints by printing images from Hartigan’s own archives of eighties Auckland signage, blending melancholic loss with a mood of bleached exuberant hue. Neon is now disappearing from our urban nightscapes but these treatments get reabsorbed to be seen indoors by day. Being stretched on canvas they become a strange variety of painting – but one printed from digital files.

Hartigan also has some coloured Ultrachromes of little plastic coloured figures from the early nineteenth century, that look like they are from a history board game or – as in France – a cake. Under glass the solidity of these boxed glowing plastic colonial and Maori personalities is a distraction. They look too small and too heavy with their black frames. They would work better as vertical wall hangings like say, Christine Webster’s photographs.

Of the three genres, the physicality of the Revolutions provides the most visceral excitement. The turning, reflected twists of assorted chroma (selected by referencing the named artists whose works so inspired) when brought indoors, introduce an abstract but complex optical mix into each domestic setting.

Open Plan Bordello

The brothel without walls: Kevin Capon, Conor Clarke, Paul Hartigan, Geoffrey Heath
City Art Rooms
27 May - 21 June 2008

Despite the show’s title, taken from Jean Genet, nothing too exhausting is happening in these photographs. Hardly an orgy is depicted or implied – for voyeurs, fantasists or otherwise. But there are two sorts of photographer presented, open to analysis in other ways; two that use digital technology to construct images, and two that don’t.

Paul Hartigan is the most well known artist here. He uses old documentary Polaroids he created in the eighties of street signage in New Zealand cities. He has scanned and enlarged these and altered some details. When he has printed the results onto canvas they become a sort of hybrid artwork, a combination of print, painting and photograph. They become a fascinating surrogate for the original weather-beaten and sun bleached signs he recorded. Once ubiquitous (but now gone) outdoor advertising is replaced by refined and aestheticised gallery art which, as historical artefacts, mourn the signs’ passing.

Conor Clarke’s ‘full frontals’ feature the ornate entrances of Victorian villas, examining the decorative configurations of veranda fences and porch screens. Her images don’t seem that excessive unless you cotton on to their strange hybridity. They look authentic at first, even though their original colours have been replaced by suburban picket-fence white, but then their peculiar arabesques start to distract and you realise that these are wildly curvaceous extrapolations. Because of their frontality they could almost be decorative paintings like those of Valerie Jaudon. They are subtle images that tease you into believing and doubting things you shouldn’t.

Kevin Capon has been exhibiting photographs for well over thirty years, exploring all sorts of subject matter. Here he mixes conventional photographs with appropriated family photographs from his childhood. Some of the recent images examine light pouring into store front-window displays. Both have an uncanny quality, a subtle and disturbing strangeness that seems inexplicable.

There are two suites of work from Geoffrey Heath: smaller, more subtle portraits of friends taken (I think) in their homes, and larger broader shots of objects in domestic or outdoor settings. Of the latter, the headless self portrait of the artist reclining on a couch in his underwear is the most startling. It showcases the vertiginous whirling lines of the furniture’s fabric pattern as it whirls around the sexual blue triangle at the image’s centre. Another large image of a clown standing near a pine forest has an ominous John Wayne Gacy creepiness.

Yet it is with the smaller, intimate ‘Spare Room’ portraits that Heath really excels. Their very considered backgrounds combine with the body language of each sitter to enable a clarity of form and nuanced edge. The sitters are relaxed but precisely positioned, dressed and made up. The resulting suite of five images is more cohesive and convincing than the other larger works.

This is an excellent group show at City Art Rooms, with valuable detailed information on the take-away catalogue sheet about the title’s concept and each artist. It is an excellent contribution to the photography festival currently on in Auckland.

'Ice' is nice

Paul Hartigan’s Ice Ball
Whitespace window display in Crummer Rd, Auckland
4 March - 28 March 2008

This neon work of Hartigan’s is part of Whitespace’s ‘Political World’ show, and can only be seen from the street. In fact Ice Ball is the exhibition’s highlight, and looks best at night when the gallery is closed. (It is the highlight in the daytime too; the rest of the work is, I think, forgettable).

It is worth driving past in the evening to have a close look. While not as overtly spectacular as Colony, Hartigan’s persimmon Symonds St work at the University, Ice Ball is still a treat. Small and intimate, it is like a loosely tangled knot in the middle of vertical piece of stiff cord that is positioned against a small, white, reflective disc. If you move from the centre of the window to the far right, the complex core unflattens to become more spatially imposing and quite angular. It springs out at you and looks like a jumbled assortment of crescent shapes.

The best thing though is the soft colour, especially when reflected off the pale concrete backdrop. Plastic wiring sheaths at each end of the white glass tubing contain glowing bands of violet blue, and on the last ten inches of the upper vertical section the colour is greeny blue. It sends a gorgeous ‘baby-blue’ wash across the wall.

Magical light sculptures like this are worth a squiz. A bonus for the changing of summer hours into autumn.