Artist, Aaron Waghorn’s latest exhibition ‘Dance to the beat of the living dead’ was recently shown at Bowen Galleries. While Waghorn insists that there are no particular themes in his hybrid series of paintings, the striking pieces are efficaciously provoking. For me, the miscellany of elements that stem from high renaissance to pop culture floods my mind with thoughts on how our changing ideals within art and culture are perhaps a peripheral layer for a deeper, more visceral root.
Waghorn, who lists inspirations such as Richard Prince, Sigmar Polke and Jean-Michel Basquiat, has hand-painted every image to resemble a woodcut print.
Waghorn paints within the positive and the negative, with a few of the paintings combined into diptychs. Some paintings in the series are ostensibly busy yet are exquisitely harmonized through the offsets of colour. Another dimension is added to the work through the shapes such as rectangles, circles and colour rays, which Waghorn refers to as abstract interruptions.
For more information on Aaron Waghorn and his work, head to www.bowengalleries.co.nz/artists/waghorn.php
Words by Reema Alfouir 4th March 2015
Artist Aaron Waghorn. Photo credits and copyright used with permission ©Stephen A’Court
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