Around the Window

Anya Henis: Soft rocks stainer
Window, University of Auckland Library foyer
24 February – 25 March 2010

We have here something admirably unusual for Window, an impressionistic abstract wall drawing by Henis that is an installation around and in the Window gallery 'box'. It has been made with what looks like coloured ink, but with spaced apart lines that have been brushed on. The artist has used only the three primary hues (i.e. paint primaries, not light) and this has been applied directly on the wall at the back of the gallery ‘proper’, and the two walls on each side  –  one adjacent to the wide stairs going up to the library; the other on the side of the courtyard and Alfred Street.

Before I describe the work in more detail, let’s speculate over the contextual information Henis has provided. Her poster (see above) shows a dozen eleven-sided polygons containing what seems to be marbling from Victorian book covers or pages. The title? I know I’ll be accused of having a one-track mind but I reckon testicles. What else can ‘soft rocks’ be? And a penis is ‘the stainer’.

So we have (despite Foucault’s opposite view) the repressive Victorians and the randy permissiveness of our current age: poster and title together as opposites. A sort of oxymoron

In a leaflet available on the gallery wall Henis publishes a poem:

Soft rocks stainer
a sound from one to the other

strokes of the sun
stream through glass
in layers of incandescent tone

waves of restlessness

throw your words away and practice keeping secrets

freedom forms
everything at once and all the time

It’s pretty oblique isn’t it? Or is it? Let’s describe the painted drawing. It uses a vocabulary of five sorts of mark spread out like an ancient cave painting. They don’t compose as such, but are dissipated and unconnected. They are quickly applied, and so not sensitively considered in their application, as say her paperworks are.

First of all there are the fainter and smaller, yellow vertical or diagonal curves that look like eyebrow hairs. These are usually aligned in thick vertical configurations that mainly are, by themselves, under the window that faces outside. (Perhaps these are strokes of the sun…stream through glass. Perhaps even a reference to John Donne’s The Sun Rising.) There are also a few on the opposite wall adjacent to the library.

Then there are the same sort of vertical ‘hairy’ mark constellations but in blue – found mainly on the library wall and a few on the righthand end of the gallery Window backwall.

Thirdly there also is a scattering of small blue dots under the window facing out.

Fourthly there is a much heavier variety of dark blue line that looks like inverted eyebrows. They gather in groups mainly near the top edge of the ‘library’ wall and separate more and more moving down. There is definitely a wave like quality present, not only literally but also in a sense of increasingly urgent dynamic. (waves of restlessness)

Lastly there are some bright red squiggles, short single twisting lines a bit like the edge of a mouth – scattered along the library and Window walls.

So what can we make of all this – the whole thing, the total package?

Well there do seem to be coital references here, and orgasmic ones too – especially in coordination with the ‘stream’ ‘strokes’ ‘waves’ and ‘secrets’ of the poem. But talking about it like this seems pretty crass. Yet Henis doesn’t seem to be a prankster or provocateur. The work is a serious project. And the drawing does appear preoccupied with the body as scattered floating repeated fragments - resulting from a process that seems unfinished or unresolved.

It is an interesting failure I think - this spatial experiment on three planes with coloured lines. The squiggly marks don’t draw you in to their surfaces and the dynamic overall is almost incoherent. Yet it is an exciting thing to attempt and I admire Henis's courage. It’s great to use these walls, so hopefully it is the start of more spatial experimentation to come.

Before and After

Anya Henis: Raw Feels
RM
26 November - 12 December 2009

This display of a dozen watercolours inside the gallery and five on the outside noticeboard in the corridor, reveal Anya Henis to be capable of making works totally different from the tightly composed, representational oil on canvas works she has presented at Newcall and The Physics Room. The marks on these pinned up pieces of paper, in contrast to her earlier work are fluid and loose, working the zone between order and chaos. They happen to be her best work yet I think - by far - having a generous expansive quality, free from the pinched compression of the canvases.

Some of the most exciting examples are based on wet skeletal grids that peek through the over-painted colour. The strong and frenetically applied chroma plays off against the watery underpinning that somehow retains a compositional focus through a dominantly structured pattern. These works are turbulent as clusters of frenzied marks - though not in the emotional mood of the actual colour - yet control is never too far away. The six large works have real impact. Their delicate washes are impossible to photograph but the interwoven tangled and patterned forms intrigue.

I’ve no idea why Henis has switched to such a different visual style and technique. Perhaps she maintains (or has maintained) two sorts of practice simultaneously: one carefully preplanned and tight; the other improvised, loosey-goosey and spontaneous. If Raw Feels is this show’s title, then perhaps the other work is Cooked Thinks? As a foil, this 'under-heated' exhibition is an exciting development.

(Thanks to Nick and William for organising images.)

Method for its own sake

Anya Henis: Cool water woman
The Physics Room, Christchurch
29 April - 24 May 2009

This small exhibition of four ‘nature’ paintings by Anya Henis, though still preoccupied with matters cultural in terms of representation, has no architectural or manmade forms to be seen - unlike her larger show at Newcall gallery last year. Though skimpy, it’s a more cohesive display, preoccupied with how we view the outdoors and ‘scenic’ vistas. No interiors, tents, tile patterns or pot plants this time. Instead we see lush green images of bush clad hills and waterfalls, or rocks being surrounded by the advancing tide.

The oil paint brushwork is also more compact, with a drier, slightly encrusted surface without sheen. Texture is more apparent - using a sharper, more synthetically hued palette that is less earthy or ochry, that is cool not warm.

Henis’ fixation on texture results in a strangely stilted quality here, a rigidity of form that accompanies the dominant foliage hues. While consistent, this display doesn’t reach the highs of the somewhat uneven Newcall exhibition. It exploits clichéd subject matter to concentrate on surface without really advancing beyond the trite. Though full of surprises it is ultimately technique without vision.

Two out of seven

Anya Henis
Jungle television
Newcall Gallery
20 August - 6 September

There are seven ‘realist’ paintings by Henis at Newcall. Some work, some don’t. There’s one work that avoids a spectral range, Texas, that is brilliant - of brown arches in a sort of cathedral. It is sculpturally modelled and very focussed in terms of palette. Just wonderful. Most of the show though, is all over the place.

Of the rest, some indicate that she has painted what she sees and not what she knows, and are like collages in their textured treatment of walls without shadows - accompanied by floating, super intense bright skies. The perspective is not accompanied by modelling shadows so the planar shapes don’t sit properly on the picture plane.

Love Hotel though, is a success, an image of a tiled corner in a Japanese hotel lobby with plants and palms. Symmetrical with plainly coloured ovals set against detailed fine brushwork, it succeeds because of its balance.

The two works I have praised here are well worth seeing and quite special. The other five, forget.

This exhibition is accompanied by a text by Harold Grieves that tells you all about the erudition of the writer and bugger all about the art. Flatulent yet dense with literary references, it is preoccupied with narrative with no grasp of how the images are constructed. Like a lot of art writing these days that young graduates seem to love (because it flatters) it is useless.