ART CITIES:Hong Kong-Garth Weiser

The work of Garth Weise is concerned with languages of abstraction and the physicality of the painted surface. His work is created by overlaying abstraction upon abstraction, each unique layer representing a distinct history in terms of content, form and materiality, resulting in a gestural surface burnished with shimmering strata of thick pigment.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Simon Lee Gallery Archive

Garth Weiser presents new paintings in his solo exhibition   at Simon Lee Gallery, Hong Kong. Weiser’s densely layered paintings celebrate and interrogate the possibilities of the genre. His unorthodox and exploratory approach to surface, dimensionality and perception has resulted in a body of work that is as engrossing and revealing, as it is imaginative. The artist constructs his paintings layer by layer, reliant primarily on oil paint, spraying and scratching into the canvas’ viscous surface to leave behind a collection of frenetic lines, curves and slashes. As a result of his distinct process, evocative in vigour of the highly-charged manner spearheaded by Abstract Expressionists Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, the artist has succeeded in blurring the line between painting and sculpture, using thick impasto to create genre-defying paintings. This most recent body of paintings sees Weiser explore an evolved sense of animation that has formerly lingered at the innermost layer of his dense oeuvre. The works are characterised by sprawling patterns and forms that stretch expansively across the canvas. Weiser’s gestures veer wildly between organic forms, suggestive of insects or plant life, to frenzied and explosive expressions in vibrant colours set against seemingly impenetrable backgrounds. The patterns on these detail-laden paintings command the viewer’s close attention; The paintings are more effectively untangled in-person and up-close unearthing and exposing the deeply-embedded layers of underpainting, which are often highlighted by the artist’s incisions in the multiple layers; a process of removing the surface similar to the sgraffito technique in ceramics. The vascular surfaces of the works trigger chromatic vibrations and optical illusions. Multiple perspectives and after-images emerge and recede with tributaries feeding and looping back into one another, giving rise to a new and complex visual lexicon, rooted in the canon of abstract painting. A departure from his early work, which demonstrated a strong interest in graphic and geometric design, drawing on elements of the Op Art movement, Weiser’s recent work reveals a new engagement with composition, agency and intention, confronting abstract expressionistic tropes with the use of different effects, procedures and materials. The layering of pigment in the paintings complicates the distinction between areas of colour and line, generating a sense of uncertainty to the identity of each. Surfaces absorb light and reflect it unevenly, keeping the viewer mobile via optical instability and a lack of figure-ground distinctions. While abstract, the works are still illusionistic, and shadows, gradations of colour, a sense of movement, variations between light and darkness, rippling waves, wood grain, and reverberating contours are evoked in the undulating palette and seismic surfaces of the artist’s multi-faceted practice.

Info: Simon Lee Gallery, 304, 3/F The Pedder Building , 12 Pedder Street, Central, Hong Kong, Duration: 15/5-27/6/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.simonleegallery.com