Kees Bruin works

Press, 13 June 1984, Page 28

Kees Bruin works

Paintings and Drawings by Kees Bruin at the Canterbury Society of Arts until June 17. Reviewed by John Burrell.

Thirteen paintings and six drawings make up this exhibition by Kees Bruin in the North Gallery of the C.S.A. Almost all of the works are in the photorealist idiom, looking as if they have been created using photographs as source material, particularly the recent portraits where it is sometimes hard to tell the difference. The best works by far in this exhibition are the six coloured drawings based on the activities of a moving skateboarder on a steeply cambered ramp. Unfortunately these relatively dynamic works made with crayon on card, which have an added interest as a possible metaphor for the Christian life, have been already displayed twice previously in Christchurch within the last year. They serve as filler in what is basically a weak exhibition. Much of the work is disappointing for the same reason, that it has been exhibited before. Even the newer works are devoid of any sense of a mind using art as an exploratory activ-ity-by which materials and images probe the world for meaning. Instead the recent oil nor-

traits and views of Sumner conform to the popular stereotypes of painting as a craft by which nature is imitated. They lack even an adventurous scale to redeem them, and the portraits have a frozen stiffness that prevents any sense of personality or warmth radiating from the subjects. These negative aspects do not appear a deliberate

comment by the artist on his sitters, but are more a reflection of his own inability to select appropriate photographs. This thematically unfocused exhibition places an emphasis on a particularly meticulous technique but with nothing substantial to be conveyed, it never transcends the banality of the images.