One-man exhibition

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33873, 19 June 1975, Page 12

One-man exhibition

Bashir Baraki is show- ; Ing recent paintings and drawings at the C.S.A. gallery in a well presented one-man exhibition due to close on June 29. Included are a large number of, predominantly hill, landscapes, three portrait drawings, and three madonnas; the madonnas and landscapes form the background for the motifs employed in the recently commissioned “St Francis Altarpiece” for the Paparua Prison Chapel. Baraki exhibits a determined application to the problems of painting, not without some inconsistencies in the standards realised and similarly not without a degree of eclecticism, but these are m themselves not necessarily bad qualities and almost inevitable in a young artist feeling his way and discovering a mode of ex-p-ession appropriate to himself. fhe Madonnas, executed tn mixed media involving collage, acrylic and goldleaf. are brave attempts at finding a modem context for devotional art. The inclusion of applied goldleaf with its richness of colour and quality of surface, links them with the tradition of Orthodox icons, but here the severely conventionalised Madonna heads are distributed within stylised assemblages of collage and painted pattern fragments derived ultimately from Western cubism. The "Madonna of the Forest” with its sinuous trees, stylised plant forms and fleur-de-lis patterns is.

in its total feeling, strongly reminiscent of art nouveau sharing the particular energies, rhythms, tensions, and feeling for flat surface of that style. Whilst the Madonnas represent a continuation of Baraki's previous subject matter. the landscape is a newer area of concern for him. Colin McCahon has come to occupy such a significant position in New Zealand painting, particularly for artists concerned with the landscape, that it seems his

influence is inescapable. This has in turn led to a degree of artistic incest and Baraki is no less guilty of it than many of his colleagues. In such works as “Porthills Sisters" he is seen to con-; sciously emulate McCahoirs ■ monumental simplicity, but, ■ in others, although utilising i . a more saturated colour' ■ range, he more closely approaches Woollaston’s paint I treatment. When Baraki sets aside. McCahon's severity in 1 favour of a more romantic tendency in such works as the fine little "Tree Collage,” or the sunny atmospheric “Three Sisters,” he is both a good deal more successful and more truthful to his own inclinations. Two small landscape series are included. the one of Porthills .composed within a circular format and painted with vigorous. nervous, wriggling brushstrokes, the other a series entitled “Creation.” I Six sequential scenes from the second and third days of the creation of the firmament are depicted. In the first a small portion of the landscape appears in one ; corner, extending across the! 1 picture plane to link both; sides becoming finally, at the conclusion of the third day, dry land and vegetation. The six works are very much a sequential cycle, the i one dependent upon the others for its true significance — the artist’s decision to sell each separately, out of context, and re-i duced in thematic value is' difficult to understand. —T.L.R.W. I