Richard Lewer, You Can't Win Them AllOrex Gallery, AucklandUntil March 6In most societies the following of sports activities can be seen as almost a religious activity with more passion and energy expended on a major rugby match than at any church service
Richard Lewer, You Can't Win Them All
Orex Gallery, Auckland
Until March 6
In most societies the following of sports activities can be seen as almost a religious activity with more passion and energy expended on a major rugby match than at any church service.
Richard Lewer's latest exhibition, You Can't Win Them All, addresses this issue with depictions of dramatic moments in sport, not of great triumphs but rather he concentrates on the moments of defeat and failure.
All the paintings, probably based on photographs from the sports pages, depict men and women having just made a major mistake, fumbled a ball, let the opposition through or generally let the side down.
The figures stand in isolation or in groups but each conveys the despondency, anger and grief which comes with defeat.
The heroic figures of the sportfield are often given the status of gods or superheroes and in their defeats they can take on the status of martyrs.
So like his previous exhibition, Stations of the Cross, these are men crying out in their moment of desperation like the martyrs of old or Christ realising he is on his own.
Simple means
In his “Beaten Man” ($10,600), a large face manages to combine monumentality with wretchedness. The pinkness and bruising of the face making him both a highly coloured beaten boxer and other-worldly character.
The two rugby players in “I have let everybody down” ($9200) is close to being a Renaissance pieta with the figures in positions of defeat and succor.
The upright figure with a screaming wide mouth in “Fitzroy Player (Fuck)” brilliantly captures the anguished release of the expletive.
The figures he creates are part cartoon, part symbols and they convey the sense of emotion and narrative through simple means. He uses bold colours, abstracted features as well as lines and shapes which suggest slumping, collapse and depression.
These paintings, like many of his previous works, try to look at the ordinary people and events of daily life and recognises them not as exceptional but as mundane. It is the very simplicity and ordinariness of the lives he depicts that make them metaphors for the daily struggle of life.
• A survey exhibition of Richard Lewer’s work “I must learn to like myself” opened this week at the Waikato Museum of Art and History and continues until August 15.
