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July 29, 2015 – Review
"In Motion"
Claudia Arozqueta
“In Motion,” the group exhibition currently on view at Starkwhite, Auckland, is a continuous dance of colors, with works from four contemporary artists from Australia and New Zealand—Rebecca Baumann, Brendan Van Hek, Grant Stevens, and Alicia Frankovich—and two historical artists: the Hungarian-American artist László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) and New Zealand-born Len Lye (1901–1980).
The exhibition opens with Rebecca Baumann and Brendan Van Hek’s collaborative work Untitled (2015), a minimal set of three mirrored acrylic panels, tinted in CMY primary colors (cyan, magenta, and yellow) and mounted in aluminum frames. Though static and flat, the work positions the visitor as a performer-spectator in a room of mirrors, in which movement and reflection, light and color, orchestrate an altered perception of space. The panels create a trompe-l’oeil effect: the white, neutrally lit gallery transforms into a cold blue, warm pink, or garish yellow room respectively, while the visual combination of panels results in mixtures of red, blue, and green. But despite its attractive color and sense of play, the installation is only fleetingly captivating, leaving little impression of the experience on the viewer.
Upstairs the atmosphere is more seductive, with works that engage the transitory nature of perception with more experimental and symbolic approaches. Particle …