Press Release. For immediate release, 25 February, 2008
Is it a bird, is it a plane?
Shiny Black Shapes Transform Gallery to Grotto
Grotto: wall works by Victor Berezovsky opens with a roar at the Michael Hirschfeld Gallery on Thursday 6 March to
coincide with the Festival Late Night Session - although visitors may want to return later for some more peaceful
contemplation.
Berezovsky’s large-scale works, which are painted directly on to the gallery walls, play on the ambiguities of
perception and appeal to our need to affix meaning to or translate them. These black gesso-painted forms may seem
familiar, almost decipherable, resembling shapes or images we already know, yet they could also represent voids, holes
or openings.
The abstract forms create an unfamiliar landscape, drawing attention to the physical space of the gallery itself, while
indirectly suggesting a conceptual space beyond. The empty white walls seem different, becoming perhaps as meaning-full
as the shapes.
In the windowless Michael Hirschfeld Gallery, Berezovsky plays with the idea of a ‘grotto’— a cave-like space without
natural light - as host to the primitive, prehistoric forms, drawing on ideas of 1950s psychotherapy and optical theory
concerning illusions of mass and weight. By invoking the overlap of physical space and ‘space of mind’, the works
transform the gallery into a kind of meditative no-man’s land. The exhibition is particularly timely given the pending
remodelling of Michael Hirschfeld Gallery; drawing attention to the small physical space which is about to change, but
also to the limitless breadth of a ‘mind-space’.
Born in 1974, Berezovsky completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts (majoring in painting) at Ilam, Canterbury University in
1995. Currently he lives, shows and works in Wellington as a full time artist. His most recent solo exhibitions include
Bobble, Mary Newton Gallery, Wellington, 2007 and an earlier version of Grotto, Conical Inc, Melbourne, Australia, 2006.
A temporary public art commission, Junction at Toi Poneke Gallery finishes in March.
Grotto: wall works by Victor Berezovsky
6 March - 13 April, 2008
Michael Hirschfeld Gallery
City Gallery Wellington
Admission: FREE
citygallery@wmt.org.nz, www.citygallery.org.nz
ends