Through colour and texture Garcia explores the past, present and future. At once quixotic and compelling, these paintings draw you in and keep you there. Raw plywood exerts itself beneath the layers of paint. The work is freeform and premeditated, comprising oil pastel, oil paint and gesso.
Random, accidental and deliberate marks punctuate colour panels: finger prints, scuffs, scratches, and remnants of old panels impose on those freshly painted. Layers of paint contrast the quick and dirty slapdash. There is also an industrial element to these works. “I love 60s decollage from old advertising billboards, ply hoarding around building sites, and roughly painted hoarding around airports across Asia,” Garcia has said.
‘‘This show has been in the making for over three years. Dozens of panels have been created and recreated; sequences, layers and configurations have lived and died, only to be reborn again. I settled on 48cm x 30cm ply panels – they are easy to work with and I love the timber grain.
“These panel dimensions work on a large scale, whilst narrower 48cm x 15cm panels seemed appropriate for the smaller works. The firmness of the ply during paint application appeals as compared to canvas bounce. I can really attack the ply in a fashion not possible with canvas.
“My children have influenced my palette enormously. It’s fair to say my daughter is my biggest influence. It’s a subliminal charge that spits out pink and turquoise. The mental process is the configuration, how panel placement impacts the eye and the heart.”
Tension between the contrived and the sublime engages the viewer. We want to smell and touch what’s underneath the framework. Like Francis Bacon’s use of glass frames to accentuate distance and remoteness, so Garcia’s frames frustrate – but at the same time dictate that the art is precious because of its imperfections and its slap-dash appearance. Garcia’s work suggests that our sometimes obsessive search for perfection is flawed. The imperfection is itself exquisite. Joy permeates the work but a touch of melancholy resonates in the panels.
Garcia’s work references multiple (and often opposing) artistic genres including ancient Islamic geometric art, Dada, Suprematists, Nouveaux Réalistes, Abstract Expressionists, and so-called Minimalists of the mid-late twentieth century. Garcia draws upon, amongst other things, Rothko’s existential concerns and reference to Koon’s work is also relevant.
It is 100 years since Malevich spurred the Suprematist movement with its focus on the primacy of feeling in the creative arts. Garcia’s work is similarly idealistic and harks back to the days when art and artists wanted to change the world through manifestos. But this work is not naive, it speaks our modern language – a language that involves joy, pain and, above all, love.
Through these panels Garcia aims to fuse the soul, emotion and intellect.
“As you soak up the colour, consider this artwork a cortical trigger that unmasks and reroutes certain neural pathways in your brain. Alternatively, consider these paintings a portal, an interzone, which transports you to a specific point in the space-time continuum. Either way, during absorption you will eventually be ‘cortically remapped’ – specifically with rejuvenated and replenished capacity to live and to love.”
Garcia has been painting for almost 15 years. He was born in Papua New Guinea, lived in the UK and Sweden as a child, and has travelled extensively throughout his life. He has held solo and group exhibitions over the past ten years, including at Sherman Gallery in Sydney and Flinders Lane Gallery in Melbourne.
Alan Garcia: Cortical Remapping – Colour Manifesto shows at Flinders Lane Gallery, 137 Flinders Lane, Melbourne, from October 29 – November 16.
Images:
1) Alan Garcia – cr74321
2) Alan Garcia – cr95678
3) Alan Garcia – cr82341
