PRESENTATION: Hop Hip

Although it might seem a long way from the world’s traditional cultural centres of Paris and New York, due to enlightened patronage and a can-do ethos, the arts are thriving in the South Pacific. New Zealand is place where timeless crafts and deep heritage meets modern movements and cutting-edge contemporary art.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: The Nomadic Art Gallery Archive

By bringing together three artists from different backgrounds working in New Zealand with a Belgian sculptor, The Nomadic Art Gallery with the exhibition “Hop Hip” aims to visually/conceptually dissect the rhythmic cadence inherent in the artworks in the light of musical genres.  Crawling your way through the four different spaces, is as visually listening to Baroque, Russian classical Folk, experimental noise, vaporwave and Hip-Hop.  The exhibition  brings together New Zealand artists Philip Trusttum, Ahsin Ahsin, and Marcus Hipa in tandem with Belgian sculptor Dany Tulkens, as they explore the wavering tension between music and visual art. As visitors circulate the four different gallery spaces in the show, they visually listen in turn to Baroque, Russian classical folk, experimental noise, vaporwave – and hip-hop. As the artists jointly dissect the rhythmic cadence inherent to artworks in light of musical genres, the gallery grows into a hybrid entity, announcing the deterritorialization of cultural and physical space. Philip Trusttum is one of New Zealand’s most recognised contemporary painters. His works are usually large-scale and energetic, set on unstretched canvas. Trusttum’s work has largely been inspired by everyday life experiences often worked into a semi-abstract form, with his subject matter in turn ranging from landscapes to tennis, gardening to horses, and Japanese masks to portraits.  Impossible to categorise because of his immense creativity, Philip’s paintings and collage works have been referred to as neo-expressionist and abstract. He experiments with and refines ideas and techniques to suit his own artistic temperament. Philip is a prolific and biographical painter, the personal subject matter ranges from his gardens and his grandson’s toy trucks to the dynamics of tennis and is grandiose in style and scale. His large works are uninhibited with paint brushed, daubed, or scraped onto the surfaces with expressive energy. Ahsin Ahsin is an artist based in Hamilton Aoteroa NZ. Ahsin has exhibited largely throughout New Zealand in the Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Coromandel, Auckland and Melbourne. He has an extensive list of commission work and has participated in international art initiatives including a series in India.His works are vibrant and dynamic, influenced by 1980s-90s sci-fi films and street art with a variety of artistic and pop culture references. His imagination distills into fantastic creatures and sigils, graffiti marks and gestures suspended in hyperspace. He works his neo-pop style across a variety of surfaces that can be seen on the street in mural form and in galleries. Marcus Hipa is a Niuean Artist born and raised in Alofi, Niue Island. He moved to New Zealand to further his creative interests, attending the Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland, completing both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Drawing, painting and carving are some of the mediums he utilises to explore and share insights of his people’s history and culture. Celebrating the values, traditions, progress and sense of community, as well as shedding light on social and political issues affecting our Pacific people in our Pacific region and in Aotearoa. Dany Tulkens is a sculptor from the school of Koenraad Tinel and peer of Roland Rens, is most noted for his singular, demanding technique, through which he knocks and welds together bronze and razor-sharp quips with informed and skilled craftsmanship. Tulkens scrutinizes and magnifies the peculiarities of man, allowing his sculptures to seemingly bathe in an atmosphere of surrealism. Pointing to the sometimes-unimaginable smallness of the human being, he probes the mysteries that surround him, as sarcasm, irony, and cynicism subtly circulate through the works, all-the-while carried by a soft light-heartedness. The world evoked by the artist is a universal world, one determined neither by time nor by space – and one somewhat akin to the shared sense of alienation experienced when confronted with the microscopic image of a known object. Ultimately, all presence in his work, while fully sarcastic, exudes its own stoical descent towards nothingness, written into its shape, into its stance.

Participating Artists: Philip Trusttum, Ahsin Ahsin, Marcus Hipa and Dany Tulkens

Info: The Nomadic Art Gallery, Brusselsesteenweg 168, Herent, Belgium, Duration: 22/10-29/11/2021, Days & Hours: Sat 10:00-17:00, www.thenomadicartgallery.com