HENRY CURCHOD – ‘Apfelschuss’
Tristian Koenig - 28th FEBRUARY - 23rd MARCH 2019
This is the first solo show in Melbourne for the young Sydney artist,
building upon a notable inclusion in a group show at the gallery last year. ‘Apfelschuss’
comprises twelve, mostly mid to large easel paintings, all oil and acrylic on
canvas. The work deals in rippling figures amid vivid churning fields; exotic,
vaguely Middle Eastern settings. Motifs of an apple, an arrow, a bow, a snake,
goldfish, a candle, an oil lamp, a toy monkey and bleached bones hint at some
mythic or symbolic meaning and in conversations with the dealer and artist this
transpires to be a mash-up of a Persian folktale with the legend of William
Tell shooting an apple from the head of his young son together with William
Burroughs’ tragic re-enactment in which he shot his wife. The title of the show
‘Apfelschuss’ (‘apple shot’) is taken from the German generic term for a feat of
marksmanship.
Apfelschuss (2019) 152.4 X 152.4 cm oil and acrylic on
canvas
Yet very little of this is obvious in the works. We have several works
featuring a long bow (rather than Tell’s crossbow) and rather than a child, the
target would seem to be an eastern beauty, as in Throning (2019) where the apple serves more as a coronation than
target practice, perhaps offers an interesting transposition for the roving
folklorist. None of the works feature guns.
Throning (2019) 102 X 76cm oil and acrylic on canvas
As for the role of goldfish, candles, a sea serpent and a clutch of
drifting bones, presumably one must consult the relevant Persian folktale.
There is, to be sure, some personal relevance in the artist’s father being
Iranian and relating the scandal of Burroughs’ shooting to him as a young child,
in which the artist then imagined Burroughs somewhere in Iran (or in
pre-revolutionary times, Persia). Consequently, the substitution of an alluring
beauty for the child throughout the series possibly acquires some psychological
resonance. However, none of this really explains the nuts and bolts of the
paintings - the curious, sinuous line to figures, and especially hands, the
floating, surging grounds of rich colour and casual facture, the close attention
to pattern and architectural framing devices. None of these things are
particularly tied to myths of archery or family reverence yet these are
foremost in our impressions.
The style has myriad precedents in variants of Symbolism, Art Nouveau
and Expressionism and yet somehow remains resolutely contemporary. Its thin, broad
washes, halting brushwork and abrupt juxtapositions in treatment, scale and
drawing mark it as part of a trend to a more detached, circumspect encounter
with the world. It is a trend that has largely followed in the wake of the work
of Peter Doig, particularly his later work and to a lesser extent The New
Leipzig School. It is an aesthetic that retreats, not so much historically, as
socially or culturally, from stricter identities and more loaded or political issues.
It is painting that often takes itself on holiday. Coincidentally, the work of
Adam Lee currently on display at
Station Gallery, provides another local exponent, albeit adopting somewhat
different means.
Painting here assiduously avoids the rhetoric of cartoons or graffiti,
as well as the trappings of realism or standard illustration and instead embraces
something murkier and more fleeting in style, a network of allusions spun on a
gossamer of technical incident and tinkered with patiently.
Fish Whispers (2019) 124 X 102 cm oil and acrylic on canvas
A work such as Fish Whispers
(2019) for example may seem to court a deliberate inelegance in its disregard
for anatomy and proportion, in a composition that weights so much to the upper
right while seemingly abandoning the lower left tonally, that warps the
umbrella arm held by the girl yet rigidly delineates the golden arrow below,
lavishes delicacy to the flow of water but leaves limbs no more than outlined. This
discord however actually serves to display a distinctive detachment, a drifting
disengagement from standard and familiar styles in pursuit of something closer
to a process or phase. The artist is certainly capable of elegance, as
demonstrated by the circling goldfish, yet elegance in itself can never be
enough under this shifting approach. The work is more like a compendium of
linked techniques or forays that advance a theme obliquely, maintain a picture
plane diffidently.
In this sense the paintings are firstly about a pattern of engagement, a
flow of ideas, perfectly expressed in the serpentine line and aquatic imagery,
a halting immersion, signalled in intricate, wispy details and decorative
fields confining perspective, proffering an array of motifs, as in Night Shade (2019).
Night Shade (2019) 152.4 X 121.9 cm oil and acrylic on
canvas
Titles it should be noted, scarcely advance a narrative, but rather
emphasise an isolated, essentially opaque incident. Under the proposed reading,
this too splinters a consistent or continuous tale and stresses a moment, a
fleeting identification of content. Another reading may well posit a post
colonial agenda and see the works as merging or blurring cultural traditions
and while this too is an important thread to contemporary painting, this critic
is inclined to see the engagement as markedly skittish or piecemeal at the
level of execution, as an evasion as much as a sharing of underlying myth. Here
the work trades firstly in exoticism, in the remote and esoteric.
Setting The Table (2019) 152.4 X 121.9 cm oil and acrylic on
canvas
Further to the theme of marksmanship, Setting The Table (2019) with its full length archer, his back
turned amid a swarm of goldfish, his target, deep within the painting, a barely
sketched reclining female, offers the most compelling demonstration of this
scattering of motifs and techniques, of a moving target in every sense. For
many, this is the show’s standout. Here, only the slender left edge offers
anything of a Persian cue while the notional apple hovers as no more than a red
circle in the upper right, at once a sunset or rise, a prominent red dot
mischievously urging gallery visitors or a red light for urban travellers. An
extravagant shrubbery anchors the base of the composition while diagonal planes
across the top assert the decorative over any more elaborate perspective. But
all declare a swirl to events, to the shuffling composition, to a glimpse into
paintings manifold and mysterious resources and a web of mythic possibilities.
The title Setting The Table,
presumably indicates this menu.
Finally, mention might also be made of one of the smaller, more curious
works in the show, ‘Turn Off ' (2019) in which the switch in the back of a toy
monkey is deactivated.
Turn Off (2019) 70 X 50 cm oil and acrylic on canvas
Yet ‘turn off’ may also signify an obstacle to sexual attraction and
since so much of Apfelschuss toys with desire, the pun is hardly coincidental.
A monkey too may carry associations of mere animal efficiency in sex, stupidity
and or frivolity, but it is the intertwining of fingers and their cool grey
pallor that finally suggest greater resonance. Many of the works highlight
distinctive hand gestures and fingers in particular are elongated and curved,
at odds with actual knuckles but giving them greater animation, a life of their
own as probing, clinging extensions. In terms of the general theme, fingers are
where the picture is literally felt. Hands often cup a face, not just for
comfort or protection, but underlining a pictorial grasp of sensitivities. In a
minor work like Turn Off that grasp
becomes the focus and is carried through to a very precise sense of control. It
is the work of an artist acutely aware of his options.
ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
AND TRISTIAN KOENIG GALLERY
MY THANKS TO BOTH FOR ASSISTANCE
IN PREPARING THIS REVIEW
