Organ travelled down with a sparse bag of small black paintings, a hot plate, a 'found' euro numberplate, and a couple of larger works. The show sprawled out across the gallery in salon style, Sally Mcintyre called it an 'ostensibly' 'painting show' which feels like a nice, apt description. I think he served cheap spanish wine. There was someone from TV3 at the opening. She got our hopes up until she said that she was just there to cover the australian rugby palyers who'd just flown in.Aucklander Jonathan Organ has given HSP a painting show, ostensibly. A recurring motif is a grid-like grey/black/silver shifting series of abstract shapes, which both mimic and dispute the painterly frame. But disparate elements come into play, destabilising such monochromatic formal stylistics.
The variety of materials is extensive, despite aesthetic similarities, and includes works mounted on canvas, paper, board and aluminium. It also includes a 12” of My Personal Jesus by Depeche Mode on blue vinyl, a black painted portable heat element, a grid of rubber nubs, such as those found under home stereo systems, arranged on a paper surface, the ellipsoid number plate of a family heirloom Mercedes, bought in Germany, and festooned with dog tags made by the artist. Most of these found objects are ‘painterly’ in their presentation, hung on the wall. One series of small works on aluminium which, on the surface of things, look pristine and minimal, but up close are rough hewn, and speak, slightly, of ‘craft.’ This series, which the viewer is encouraged to read in a linear fashion from left to right, appears to shift like pixels, cryptic and partial blocks of information. Closer to the heat element, another series of works is readable, conversely, as stove top diagrams. The relativity of these perspective shifts is an integral part of the show as a whole, and undercuts it’s apparent formal linearity.
Sally McIntyre
