Tony Lane: a painter of icons

Facts and Fiction,
Tony Lane
Black Asterisk Gallery
Until July 15

Tony Lane could be one of the great icon painters of his age, emulating the early Christian fresco artists who dealt in symbols and images to create narratives.

His latest exhibition, Facts and Fiction, features paintings that look like early Christian and Byzantine artworks, in an attempt to understand the way in which artists convey ideas about space, time and the power of images within a framework of religion and biblical imagery.

While his art seems rooted in the Trecento (14th century) and earlier, he also builds on the abstract artists of the early 20th century and some of the important late 20th century artists, such as Anselm Kiefer.

The paintings, which are on traditional gesso panels, are overlaid with schlagmetal, an imitation gold leaf which looks like burnished metal, shimmering with elements of copper, gold and silver. This links the works to the distressed frescos and paintings of old European and Byzantine churches where elements of the architecture or traces of previous paintings show through the more recent paintings. In these paintings he discovers and reworks the ideas which those early artists dealt with – the nature of pictorial space, spatial light, simple perspective and use of symbolism.

Hs use of symbols gives hints of narrative and connections with the older art forms but they also provide links to contemporary thinking. His use of the stigmata shape could be confused with that of a space ship, waka and DNA strands.

Most of the works have the appearance of a theatrical event, with curtains pulled back to reveal the landscape, or objects. Crossing the Sinai ($18,500) depicts a desert with a range of bulbous hills. The wispy clouds are a combination of space ship, stigmata Veil ($15,000) which features a white cloth, referencing the myth of the Veil of Veronica, who wiped the face of Christ, leaving an image of his face on it. Although these can be seen as a theatrical device, the images can equally be see an as images stretched across the schlagmetal surface, like a mounted skin.

Several of the works deal with the nature of the cosmos from a primitive as well as contemporary way. They contain necklaces, strings of little balls as in Firmament ($16,500). These could be prayer beads, which also function as a form of celestial tracking. Star Map (($18,500) is both a primitive way of linking the celestial bodies as well as hinting at the more scientific aspects of string theory.

Other works include the enigmatic Nosferatu ($25,000) with its myriad stigmata shapes like little vessels supported by tear or blood drops, Veronica ($21,000) which depicts a pristine white cloth and Cipher ($16,500) a landscape work that provides something of a riddle with its cipher or code imprinted across it, providing a visual and metaphorical way through a landscape.

Although these paintings have the appearance of icons and have biblical or religious connotations they are not religious works. Rather, they are explorations of the way that artists attempt to use images and symbols. They are attempts to understand and convey a sense of the spiritual, metaphysical and psychological expression implicit in paintings. He creates a world that combines images of the past with elements of contemporary abstraction as well as linking mysticism with science.