VISUAL ART/Aidan Dunne Reviewed: Arno Kramer: Aftermath: New Drawings, Green on Red Gallery (01-6713414), Dublin, until April 13th Hanga - Further Directions Graphic Studio Gallery (01-6798021), Dublin, until April 15th.
You could say that Arno Kramer is a conspicuous presence on the Irish art scene at the moment, with substantial shows at Dublin's Green on Red and Sligo's Model Niland galleries, plus a big wall drawing at the Bourn Vincent Gallery in Limerick as part of EV+A. And the Sligo show, Ireland Drawings 1996-200, has already been exhibited at the Limerick City Gallery. Pretty conspicuous, then, except that conspicuous is the last word you'd use in relation to Kramer's ethereal work, which is so quiet and understated that you could easily walk by it without registering its layers of hesitant, linear imagery, veiled by diaphonus clouds of watercolour washes.
If that makes it sound dreamy and wistful, well, it is dreamy and wistful, but not in an overly sweet, facile way.
There is also a stubborn, intractable quality to it, a kind of core toughness of vision. Kramer is Dutch, and lives and works in Broekland, a small village in eastern Holland. He has been visiting Ireland since 1995, hence the Sligo show based on his Irish-influenced drawings. If, as seems likely, he has responded to certain lighter, lyrical aspects of the spirit of place in western Ireland, that toughness in the work also suggests a response to the hardness of the landscape, the inexorable quality of the weather, all reflected in the people.
His work is centred on drawing and, as if to emphasise the lightness and vulnerability of drawing as a way of working, it is usually presented plainly and directly, and even, on occasion, made directly on the wall in situ and so ephemeral. He uses pencil, watercolour and pastel, employing colour only sparingly, but tellingly and well. His pencil line is tentative and faltering, but in a way that suggests a probing, exploratory intent and a desire not to overstate, rather than uncertainty or contrivance.
While at first glance, amorphousness and vagueness seem to rule his pictorial world, it becomes clear that his concentration on variations of a relatively small number of consistent motifs allows us to develop a sense of his enduring concerns. The most dominant of these motifs is a dress, usually a voluminous dress, an idea originally sparked, apparently, by his seeing an Irish Times photograph of communion dresses for sale in a shop window.
Then there are bodies and, more often than not, fragments of bodies, notably feet and calves, plus spines, plus necklaces - what look like multi-cellular forms and, by contrast, diagrammatic, geometric forms.
Kramer, who also writes poetry, assumes the metaphoric freedom with his visual language that poets assume with verbal and written language. So a dress might not only refer to certain qualities in terms of its function - communion, dancing, uniform and so on - it can also become something like a person's imaginative or spiritual space, an environment. Sometimes we could be looking at either fabric or rain, perhaps both. His geometric devices evoke the world of abstract calculation and mathematical forms.
Although these apparently disconnected elements are gathered together in a common pictorial space, they always feel as if they are of a piece, constituents of an overall image, rather than making up a collage. In the end, there is a sense of a reflective, slightly melancholy sensibility, musing on how we try to know and grasp the world, the fleetingness of things, the insoluble mystery of others.
HANGA - Further Directions at the Graphic Studio Gallery marshals work by three Japanese graphic artists and one Irish artist resident in Japan, Moya Bligh.
Bligh's woodblock prints go with the medium rather than impose themselves upon it, consisting of informal parallel bands making up rectangular blocks of pattern laid side by side or superimposed. They are by no means calm and soothing, however. They generate a sense of energies held precariously in check, partly through the robust mark-making and partly through the use of sharp, complementary colours.
Mutsumi Hasegawa's drypoint etchings are distinctive in method. Many of her titles refer to air, and there is a terrific airiness, buoyancy and transparency to her prints. Her use of background whiteness is also skilful, and gives a nice sensation of scale, as though her etchings, like kites, sail into and transform the surrounding space. In fact, she observes, "my method could be called 'Copper Plate Collage'." She works with a scissors and a knife for cutting and engraving, aiming for a harmony between the edges and the engraved lines. One can only say that she succeeds brilliantly and her work, with its lightness and spontaneity, is extremely accomplished.
Kozo Shibataka's work alternates between compositions characterised by concentrated, dark gestural masses and those made up of just a few jagged, incisive marks. They recall Japanese brush painting but they don't merely enact or repeat it. Bold, decisive and explosive, you either accept their premise or don't.
Keisuke Kinoshita combines etching, computer graphics and woodblock in an inventive, effective way. His very orderly grid-based images look as if they are based on generating and off-setting patterns of dot clusters. It might sound very mechanical and to some extent it probably is, but it doesn't feel mechanical, because instinct rather than formula is obviously the decisive element. Shibataka is very good on colour, and his prints have great poise, elegance and are beautifully made. It is worth pointing out that the work in this exhibition is very reasonably priced.
