GERARD GAUCI
Chiaroscuro
 March 12th - April 2nd, 2005		  
     
    On a recent trip to Rome, Gerard Gauci was fascinated by the paintings of Caravaggio and his circle. The emergence of figures and objects from deep shadow and the brilliant colour and idiosyncratic compositions communicated a terrific sense of drama and mystery. The virtuosic technique and sheer mastery of craft inspired him to come home and incorporate what he saw into his ongoing exploration of still life painting. Gauci has long been fascinated by this historical genre not only for the sheer beauty and sensuality of the canvasses but for the suggestive nature of these arrangements of fruit, flowers and man made objects. The particular arrangement of simple things has had the power to evoke bigger questions of life, death and the nature of beauty. 

Gauci has always been interested in creating work that refers directly to art history while remaining very much in this moment. To that end these paintings incorporate simple studio props such as plywood planks, makeshift furniture and flea market finds. As well, the composition of these paintings is spatially divided into several levels. In some paintings the arrangements are wholly or partly covered by the clear plastic, normally used by painters as drop sheets. He enjoys the reference this makes to the rich draperies of earlier painting. In the end it is the enigmatic quality of the imagery (whether the still life is being protected or suffocated, shrouded or revealed by the plastic sheeting) that is the driving force behind his work.

Many hours are spent arranging objects, shifting lights, allowing things to wilt or decay. It is usually by accident that some arrangement begins to suggest a question about harmony and significance that feels simultaneously specific and elusive. This paradox is what interests Gauci and invites him to lose himself in the experience of painting.


  

 
   
Still Life with Yellow Sash
Acrylic on Canvas
43" x 57"
2004

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KEVIN SONMOR
Suite
  March 12th - April 2nd, 2005		  
     
   

Kevin Sonmor continues to explore the collision of traditional approaches to painting with his own contemporary sensibility.  While some of his imagery is inspired by the tradition of the Dutch Vanitas, the overall dramatic and even brooding tone of his work has the feeling of German Romanticism.  Notwithstanding his art historical predecessors, the referential content in Sonmor’s work is superceded by painterly qualities such as tonality, emotional pitch and the atmospheric quality they emit.

Moments of lushness are key to Sonmor’s style. His manner of rendering and his application of paint have a classicizing quality; a polish and perfection that suggests the accumulation and deployment of a tradition.  The movement of pigment across his canvases creates a heightened drama not only through the act of vigorous application but also in varying the thickness of his paint.  The  highly sensual topographical surfaces that  result assert the physicality of the painted plane, undermining conventional notions of pictorial space.

There is a peculiar quality of pathos in everything we see from Sonmor’s hand, a note of disquieting sadness that is visible in the richly coloured fields that fill his canvases and swallow up his imagery.  A strange light breaks in many of the works: illumination brightens or falters across the distressed landscapes, creating a mood of austere dignity.  Sonmor’s rigorous technical approach and unique sensibility offer both the illusion of drama and the drama of illusion.

 

 

 
  
Still Life Suite: Dog Days
Oil on Linen
40" x 40"
2005

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