From her Artists Residency at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth artist Luise Fong was given the time and opportunity to explore her own work and experiment with additional materials, including plasticine, softened and moulded by the artist’s fingers and the photogram (a photograph made by placing objects directly on photographic paper and exposing it to light).
Fong works with abstract techniques, but rather than letting her works rest in that stasis she exerts a physical presence through subtle bodily references.
With More Human Fong continues to work with the circular form. Spirals become translucent containers, separate painted ovals attached by spider cords and plasticine spirals.
The artist may drill boles through the surface to show an underlying presence which the view,et cannot help but see and wish to explore. Using this technique Fong examines bodyliness - a metaphysical perspective - rather than the actual physical form.
‘Her work investigate how our understanding of surfaces and of beauty helps to construct and affect feminine identity. Her dribbles and smudges made visible the physical process of making the work and, at the same time, refer to bodily changes, secretions and sensations.’
Opaque washes swirl evocative over the surface of Luise Fong’s paintings. The colours are layered and float over each other like a series of holed silks or transparent filmy fabrics. Swirling lines extend like the tentacles of a diaphanous sea organism (a jelly fish) or space creature. Floating in a world of intangibility, however they do not seem threatening as in an X-File paranoia but rather delicate and sensuous - compelling.
Dreamlike imagery, or indeed notions can be evoked. For example the viewer could easily imagine lying underneath the water, not drowning - but in a state of semi-consciousness where the worlds hard edges become softened. Holes may penetrate this surface , providing a channel which the viewer may examine. It reveals a different state of consciousness which contrasts - but not dramatically - with the enigmatic and mystic quality of the surface.
Press
→ In the eye of the beholder, 6-11-1995
→ Paintings feature smoky textures, Eastern Courier, 3-11-1995