NZ artist takes the cover of new international art book

New Zealand artist takes the cover of new international art book

New Zealand artist Andre Hemer is included, and has his work featured on the cover of a large new international art book, 100 Painters of Tomorrow, just published by Thames & Hudson. This is believed to be the first time a New Zealand artist has ever been on the cover of an international art book.

The 100 painters were chosen from over 4000 artists in nearly 40 countries following a global search to find “the most exciting, up-and-coming painters at work today”. Hemer is the only New Zealander to make it to the final 100. His work is also included in the London exhibition accompanying the launch of the book in late October. The Guardian newspaper picked Hemer as one of its top ten artists in the book.

Hemer’s work is attracting attention for its investigation of painting’s relationship with the ubiquitous digital image. His subject is painting itself, its history and its relationship with the era in which it is produced.

“My painting process operates between the computer screen and studio floor,” he says.

What we see in his work is a blurring of the boundaries between Photoshop’s virtual tools ¬– colour gradient fills, blurs, brushes, smudges, spray tools – and the gesture of the hand painting in oil and acrylic.

As Sydney critic Dylan Rainforth has said “For Hemer, … ‘the painterly’ shifts from belonging to a particular medium to operating across a range of visual modes.” (The Work of Painting in the Age of Digital Reproduction, Australian Art Guide, August 2013)

100 Painters of Tomorrow’s states that painting is “enjoying a remarkable creative renaissance in the 21st century” and the book shows the huge diversity in the way the included artists engage with their medium.

Andre Hemer (b.1981 Queenstown, New Zealand) has worked full-time as an artist since completing his Master of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury in 2006. He is currently completing a PhD at the University of Sydney. He has secured numerous international residencies and scholarships and exhibited widely throughout New Zealand and in Australia, Korea, Taiwan, China, Germany and the United Kingdom. In 2011 his painting Blue Poles, based on the QR code linked to the National Gallery of Australia and Jackson Pollock’s famous painting, won the Waikato Museum’s National Contemporary Art Award.

Andre Hemer is represented in New Zealand by Bartley + Company Art.

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