Harry Wong exhibition catalogue

HARRY WONG New Work

15 October-15 September 2013 pierre peeters gallery 251 Parnell Road; Habitat Courtyard; ph 09 3774832; www.ppg.net.nz

Harry Wong The emotion of beauty is always obscured by the appearance of the object. Therefore the object must be eliminated from the picture.

Piet Mondrian

We are delighted to present a new body of work by Harry Wong. Harry Wong has long been fascinated by both Pop and Op Traditions. In his new exhibition, Wong continues his experimentation with colour utilising the graphic and optical potency of his chosen medium, Perspex.

There are three distinct directions that Wong has chosen to explore in his new series. The first focuses on a liner graphic and grid-like based style, a lineage from Mondrian. The second is a revisiting and amalgamating his ‘Coastal Rhythms’ (2012) work, where the picture plane is broken down to a dynamic line of sea, sky and land. The third style emerging is the marriage of these two seemingly disparate styles, fractured colour and lyrical line to produce ‘Carnival’.

In this series, ‘New Works’, Wong works on many ideas at once and combines them in his geometric abstract style. He explores using a new palette, yet these are some of the most ancient colours known to man - earthy ochre tones. Wong demonstrates his ongoing inclination towards colour and shape of an organic origin.

New Zealand Chinese artist Wong Sing Tai, aka Harry Wong, is a painter, printmaker, and film-maker.

After he won the first Benson and Hedges Art Award in 1968, Colin McCahon described one of his works as New Zealand’s “first Pop Painting”. Yet Wong now employs his signature graphic, hard-edged style now for solely abstract concerns.

Wong is on a clear mission to resolve some of those painterly concerns he had explored in the late 1970’s.

“From a painting perspective, the content of colour, balance, concrete form and subtlety are concepts that excite me.”

Certainly one of the earliest in New Zealand to paint onto perspex, Wong returns to this 20th century support which signals his Pop heritage and his interest in its transparency and effect on colour.

Wong, the older brother of artist Brent Wong, was one of 10 artists featured in the exhibition section of the Auckland City Art Gallery Ten Big Paintings Project which also featured work

by Ralph Hotere, Colin McCahon, Don Driver, and Milan Mrkusich.

His vivid geometric abstraction nods appreciatively to such Modernist Abstractionists as, Klee, Malevich and Charchoune. Wong’s paintings and screen-prints are represented in public collections including Te Papa, Auckland City Art Gallery, the University of Auckland Collection and the Hocken.

1.

Composition in Red + Greeen Arcylic on Perspex 1630 x 1630mm

2.

Carnival #1 Acrylic on Perspex 1630 x 2000mm

3.

Carnival #2 Acrylic on Perspex 1630 x 2000mm

4.

Coastal Rhythums #5 Acrylic on Perspex 2000 x 1630mm

Harry Wong

1. Composition in red + green Acrylic on Perspex. 1630 x 1630 mm

$18,000

2. Carnival #1

Acrylic on Perspex. 1630 x 2000 mm

$24,000

3. Carnival #2

Acrylic on Perspex. 1630 x 2000 mm

$24,000

4. Coastal Rhythms #5

Acrylic on Perspex. 2000 x 1630mm

$24,000

251 Parnell Road; Habitat Courtyard; ph 09 3774832; www.ppg.net.nz