Opening night Thursday October 5th, 6:30-8:30pm
The Brush That Draws The River is the fourth major solo exhibition at Metro Gallery by artist Dean Home. Consisting of eight, large scale oil paintings and several works on paper, the show introduces us to an incredibly poetic representation of the landscapes he visited on his recent trip to China.
This trip saw Home deeply imbibing the aesthetics of the the famous scholar gardens of Suzhou as well spending time on the sacred mountain of Huangshan. The flux of aesthetic moments in these spaces is intense: gardens, pools, walkways, polished outside spaces and pavilions in which to act out or to respond to these still moments in nature. Large rocks test the unconscious response. Screens put distance between oneself and the beauty in front, where, just to the left or right, one is immediately saturated in the spectacle. Rocks are arranged to resemble clouds and the people walking over them appear supernatural. Bonsai gardens plunge the viewer into a fantasy about the character of the tree. The placement, the interaction and the flux made for a constant poetic state of mind. Home was spurred to a creative response to these spaces, recognizing in their sublimity a kind of spiritual truth.
For decades, Home has gravitated towards some of the great splendors of the natural world. Although realism is the current mode of transport – it is not the artist’s objective. Home does not seek to simply capture the physical likeness of the items he chooses to paint, but rather also their internal characteristics and qualities. Within each painting’s formation is an idealized landscape – an imaginary place where the viewer can find a space to reflect on their experience in life. Home’s paintings are much more than discretely assembled objects – they are a journey for the mind and soul.
Magnolias are a focal point in many of the new works, sharing the stage with his expertly rendered pomegranates. There is a strong pull in the recognition of the miraculous beauty of the Magnolia, and the artist has employed and extended the quality of the experience. These delicate flowers are not only obviously enlarged – they are redeployed to act as trees or outcrops in the imagined memory landscape ensembles he is meticulously building. The fruit and flowers are carefully placed to create a dialogue with the calligraphy brushes, Chinese porcelain bowls and delicate silks that Home incorporates into many of the works. These arrangements articulate ideas of the exotic and remind us of earth’s pleasures – however they also act as allegorical explorations, brought about by Home’s developing awareness of Eastern philosophy and culture. Home’s practice goes beyond the mere styling of objects as a Chinoiserie motif. There is a concentration on a narrative element, employed within the composition which has a strong relation to the Chinese idea and depiction of virtue and wisdom as mountains and streams.
Daoism regards human life and everything within the universe as harmonious and unified. Both mountains and streams are integral to the Daoist conception of the earth – they are geological metaphors that help shape the mind and character of the individual. Home’s painting Quiet, Deep Pools exemplifies his skillful inclusion of multiple landscapes within a single painting. The mountains and streams that Home paints onto the porcelain cups, are recreated, transformed, on a larger scale as he paints the composition of his selected objects. This imaginary landscape invites us in, as if we are a participant within nature itself. We clamber over the rocky outcrops of the magnolia petals, slide down the smooth curves of the leaves and wade through the pristine pools of tea. Eastern culture traditionally looks for meaning inside things, whilst Western culture tends to look upward and outside. Home’s employment of multiple landscapes creates worlds within worlds – it is spiritual symbolism that encourages the viewer ponder a world that is larger within themselves than it is outside.
The viewer can envisage themselves as the small fisherman, featured on one of the two porcelain bowls at the bottom of the painting. He is alone, tranquil amongst the omnipresent mountains and streams. In this state, in his surroundings, he can fathom the workings of the universe and his role within it – his inner psyche represented in the dark pool painted on the bottom cup. In Daoist literature, water is a commonly used metaphor for one’s “path in life”. When water flows downhill, it adapts to the the obstacles it encounters – it diverts, twists and turns, just as the individual does when faced with life’s hurdles. As the traveler in Home’s landscape, we feel this sensation – wandering through the foreground, over the fecundity of the elements in the middle ground, and pausing to take a rest in the calmness of cerulean in the background.
This kind of transcendental experience witnessed within Home’s work is aided by his expert use of colour. His employment of intense contrasts and heightened colours create an other-worldly kind of richness. The grandeur of his compositions is best portrayed in the mesmerizing work The Brush That Draws The River. The painting stands at a monumental height, reaching over two meters tall. The pomegranates glisten, bursting with life. The fruit appear as large and heavy as boulders, their tumbling seeds like smooth stones and pebbles. These pomegranates are a clever echo of the stones Home came across in the scholar gardens of Suzhou. Carefully placed in the gardens the rocks attain a new meaning. A stone is no longer a stone, but perhaps now an artificial mountain - an isolated sculpture that prompts us to recognize and contemplate its very existence. In Chinese culture, mountains represent places of sacred power and spiritual refuge – and Home’s pomegranates, replicate this idea. The holes left behind by the seeds that fell away become caves – a quiet shelter for the traveler to meditate.
The Brush That Draws The River is body of work loaded with symbolism, metaphor and narrative. The Chinese used the term “flight of the dragon” to describe the moment when an artist, truly inspired comes into contact with something greater than himself. Sure enough, Home’s long anticipated trip to China enabled a transcendent experience for the artist. In the mountains and gardens of China – his imagination was unleashed. The ingenuity of the Home as an artist is executed throughout this body of work, the show is a delightful experience for the eye and a journey for the mind.
Words by Claire Kurzmann
