Rue des Mégissiers 6, 1070 Brussels, BE
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Trevor
Richards /Jurec
WybraniecTREVOR RICHARDS & JUREK WYBRANIEC
12-08-2005-10-09-2005
Trevor Richards
Over the last 5 years the general direction of his work has been related to connections between late modernist painting and popular/ mass culture. What interests Richards is the juxtaposition or merging of ideas connected with minimalism and popular culture. The repetitive and systematic, serial nature of the works in the show feeds off both tendencies, particularly as minimalism becomes integrated into contemporary mass culture and mass culture becomes conditioned to the industrial aesthetic. Thus the works can be simultaneously significant and trite, serious and playful, and accessible and inpenetrable. Trevor Richards, 2004
(quote John Stringer, catalogue essay, 2003)
Trevor Richards has been making and exhibiting paintings since the early 1970s. One of Perth’s most respected and influential artists Richards has managed to maintain a practice that has always challenged and questioned the stereotypes of image making. He has always looked beyond the obvious to the new and different and has been a strong and leading force in local painting practices. He has influenced many artists with his commitment to experimentation and the aesthetic experience.
Jurek Wybraniec
Wybraniec applies a disciplined process of mirroring and doubling throughout his practice. A part of this practice is his signature colour palette - an ongoing juxtaposition of pink with blue, or pink with yellow. Wybraniec’s works often take form in ’pairs’ and series, such as The Painting and Its Double works which create a seemingly infinite sequence. Each canvas is ‘mirrored’ to create its double, and then each pair doubled to create a series of pairs.
“Wybraniec uses a defined series of codes and indexes for the construction of his work, somewhat in the manner of a research experiment. These are, however, more like social experiments than scientifically controlled tests, constructed in the manner of philosophical propositions. They utilize a world of doppelgangers, multiples, found spaces for intervention and bright colour, offering not a utopia, but a potential space via the modestly low-tech. This overtly personal exploration plays with ideas of pleasure and commodity.” (Sophie O’Brien, Meridian: Focus on Contemporary Australian Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, 2002, p.135)
In recent years Jurek Wybraniec has firmly taken his place as one of Australia’s leading contemporary abstract artists. Primarily based in Perth, Wybraniec has also spent a substantial amount of time working internationally. He has completed residencies at the Christoph Merian Foundation in Basel, the renowned Chianti Foundation (founded by the late Donald Judd) in Marfa, Texas, and most recently spent time working in Los Angeles. These experiences have been hugely influential in his shift from an expressionist painter, to a dedicated minimalist.
related link: http://www.trevorrichards.iinet.net/