Day 365

A Light Inside

A Light Inside II, oil on canvas [152 x 92cm]

Solo presentation of new work at Our Neon Foe 411 Parramatta Rd, Leichhardt. From March 22nd to April 22nd, 2022.

 

Exhibition text by Elliot Waugh and Priscilla Bourne.

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If you were caught in a prism, an endless Escher-like journey of colour, where would you end up? If you followed the lines, forever folding in on themselves, at what point would you stop?

Adrian De Giorgio's work holds the make-up of light, the devil’s trap of geometry and the heat of our souls. Looking at his work advance, you’re propelled through 10 years of soft focus meditation - the inner made outer.

The profound meaning of colour and form is not lost on Adrian. While the so-called language of colour has remained in debate since at least Isaac Newton’s time, it’s survived many attempts to classify or codify it. Newton famously introduced another colour - Indigo - into the classical conception of the spectrum, bringing the total to a mystically significant seven. So even before the orthodox account had been written on the physical properties of light, an occult (and highly subjective) aspect had snuck in.

If we don’t all see colour the same way, what does that say for the validity of any overarching ‘language’ or ‘system’? Even a highly evolved conception of colour such as Kandinsky’s will never be authoritative - it can only aspire to the condition of internal coherence.

Far from simply a vernacular, or a swatch book, Adrian’s work is a psychic analogue - an expansion into this realm from the twitchy tendrils tugging at the veil from the other side.

Colour is a dance, a ritual - its revelations are a courtly reiteration of the same gestures in a different order, endlessly shuffled and reshuffled, flashing brilliantly in a bewildering show. Adrian’s canvases are a highly refined version of this same ritual, enacted in a personal theatre, with whispers and intimations of light stealing in from stage right.

In the end, while we can’t all perceive the same wavelengths in precisely the same way, we can all indulge in a moment of communion with colour - a unique experience that ranges from psychic quietude to psychedelic frenzy. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that both the name and the configuration of this show - A Light Inside - reflects the idea of a kind of secular chapel, a refuge from the tribulations of having a body.

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©ADG2022

 

 

Aberrations

 

 

Acrylic on hand shaped board [120 x 40cm]

 

This is the first painting in a series (Aberrations) that was completed earlier in August this year.

 

The logic comes from a direct relationship between the container and the contained, a repetition of coloured bands that fill space concentrically from the outside (perimeter) shape and as previous work has done, accumulates the errors of the hand into an undulating chaotic wobble.

 

The vision for this work came to me one night as I woke the perimeter of my mind acted as the bounding shape to which the coloured lines of light radiated inward towards a central emptiness. I was so taken with this vision that I got up to make a drawing, recording what was seen.

 

This system of filling shapes with colour has now well established itself as a current obsession and many more drawings have been made, some of which have evolved quite dramatically. I look forward to producing more paintings in this way, both on canvas and shaped board, before sharing exactly where this work has taken me.

©ADG2021

Sun stroke

Acrylic on hand shaped plywood [84 x 54cm]

This painting was made with one continuous stroke, a single brush loaded with the six colour spectrum R O Y G I V was dragged along the surface allowing the colours to mix in its trail.

I am experimenting more and more with these colour limitations, partially as a way of exercising my understanding of colour as a steady series of transitioning hues but also as a way of thinking about light and its interactions with the rods and cones of the eye.

It is simply a coincidence that the cross section of a cone is an ellipse.

©ADG2021

Solid Vision

Posca paint maker on pine [240 x 24cm]

This work came out of the process of making other work, the underlying surface revealed, a solid bar of undulating coloured energy. The detail of rough edges is diminished with distance, appearing hard edged from afar and softer or woven on close inspection.

I was very happy to have had this work exhibited at the National Art School (Sydney) as part of the Dobell Drawing Prize #22. It was a thrill to see it there in the gallery, somewhat out of place amongst all the other drawing.

This significant work continues to feed into what I am thinking and making now. A new body of work is slowly emerging, with a returned focus on painting and surface.

©ADG2021
 

Dobell Drawing Prize #22

 

I am very honored to have been selected as a finalist for this years Dobell Drawing Prize. 

My entry is a large Posca on board drawing (2.4 metre pine plank), I wanted to make something that stands over you, tall and thin like a tear in the surface if reality. I am very excited to see it exhibited among the work of so many other excellent artists.

The exhibition will be installing this week and opening later in the month.

Snow Crash

Acrylic on canvas [91 x 61cm]

This painting, the first of 2021, follows on from work I started making in 2018.

The glowing line on a field of noise has become more complex thanks to the geometric experiments and insights of drawings made last year. Here I am using the same tessellating forms as my recent watercolour work, in which a composition is discovered by projecting lines from the corners of a grid, moving up one side and then reflected down the other. In the execution of this painting I have again attempted to retain something of the scratchiness of a drawn surface and allowed for many minor imperfections and bleeds to occur. 

A balancing of elements in this signal-to-noise ratio.

©ADG2021