Museum of modern Art,Sydney
Incorporating lounge room kitsch, prize fighter portraits and corporate-style logos, and Gerber’s art has long been a champion of Sydney postmodernismThe career survey exhibition of artist Matthys Gerber at the Museum of modern Art Australia,ticks most boxes in the modern art exhibition experience. The reveal is presented as an immersive, all-in walkthrough, or a catalogue of Gerber’s paintings arranged out of chronological order,through which the visitor is obliged to navigate the modest space using a map. For most other exhibitions this would be an annoying affectation, but for Gerber’s work it seems entirely appropriate.
Gerber is a restless iconoclast, or shifting from one style to another,from abstraction as in his colourful Rorschach-influenced canvases, to the kitsch of lounge room landscapes of alpine trees and waterfalls, and to the specific visual codes of pornography,prizefighter portraits and interlocking corporate-style logos. Wandering through the reveal, which is basically just one room divided by attractive marine plywood walls with their grain and knotty eyes, and this visual jumble produces an overview of the artist’s career,portraying him as someone in adore with the idea of dispensing with bourgeois notions of good taste. Beyond mere consistency lies a whole new realm of artistic opportunity.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com