Les fruits de mer

Julian Hooper: Once Inside
Ivan Anthony
25 November - 23 December 2009

The six Julian Hooper paintings and one drawing shown in the K’ Rd end of the Ivan Anthony premises develop his interest in Surrealism in a more pronounced way than previously – when his method was pitched slightly differently: maybe now they seem an even more quirky version of Archimboldo. As before (as in his ‘K’ Rd’ section last year) these are all portraits. Some large canvases this time.

Usually these standing figures are made up of marine life and fruit: catfish or flying fish balanced vertically on their tails, with split apples or unraveling, peeled oranges or empty seashells balanced precariously on their snouts. The dominant mood is that of Max Ernst, but the references often include Miro, Dali and Magritte.

Sometimes the portraits are a different combination, using decorative motifs of church architecture and voluminous, brightly patterned, peasant dresses. The images seem to be satirical when considered collectively, as if an attack on pomposity but also gender clichés. The men are rendered as rigid and wooden, the women as soft flowing, undulating forms of fabric.

Hooper’s images are very knowing in their eclecticism. They expect you to spot the references, for the hybridity is deliberately not hidden under the mantle of a newly absorbed ‘originality.’ They flaunt their art historical origins openly.

Whether there are metaphoric tropes intended with the rendered objects is another question. Is there a precise Renaissance type of symbolism involved with say the fruit and fish? That seems implausible. More likely they have been chosen for the simplest of reasons - that fish make nice long supple bodies, and fruit make good heads. And that they entertain with their celebration of artifice mixed in with poetic resonance.

There could also be an underpinning, sharply dualist, interpretation going on here - that the contemplative mind (i.e. the exposed fruit-head) is sweet and juicy but the aging or unwashed (fishy) body is repulsive and smelly. Probably though the reasons are morphological, just the pleasures of shape alone, rather than bearing a specific message.

Hooper’s paintings are getting more decisive and confident with their compositional placement and scale now. Yet they have a looseness and lack of spatial density that is an intriguing foil for the Saskia Leek show further up the corridor. If you are the same as me and a bit of a sucker for Surrealism, you’ll like this show.

Symbolic Portraits

Julian Hooper: Átváltozik
Ivan Anthony, Auckland
9 April - 10 May 2008

There are two parts to this Julian Hooper show.

The first re-exhibits in Anthony’s front room some of the Liliu watercolours Hooper displayed in the Gus Fisher last year during the Turbulence Triennial – works that feature a quirky mixing of Hungarian, Fijian and Tongan motifs within various imaginary and factual historical, colonial narratives.

Those works are not very successful, though the strange symbolic portraits he invents are unusual and intriguing. Many look like studies for something that needs more time to get resolved. He has tried mixing together various painting styles and the results simply don’t meld.

The second part of this show is in the two back rooms and a lot better. More Europe focused (though Pacific motifs are still present) it is less technically ambitious but with more compositional and conceptual focus. Hooper has taken the torsos and standing clothed figures and given them geometry, exploring a way of combining Miro-like components so they ‘swing’ like music. He manages to manipulate rhythms of shape, soft brusherly pulses, and arabesque curves, blending them with Picassoesque distortions.

The portraits look great within their dark wooden frames and seem an eclectic synthesis of Diena Georgetti, Joan Miro, Giuseppe Arcimboldo and perhaps Jim Nutt - though the paint is much thinner and the forms more fragmented. These latest works can be simister, especially the image of Vlad the Impaler, with his paranoid eyes peeking through the petals. This series is not as spatially spectacular as Hooper’s last show, but much more intimate. Well worth a visit.