Rohan Wealleans
Cold Comfort
Rohan Wealleans’ Cold Comfort (2006) is a Dr Seussian, pitted moonscape of a painting. Bulbous mounds, suggestive of snowy mountain peaks or pregnant bellies, and golf ball-like globes protrude out from the pock-marked paint surface. As the title implies, this painting is on the whole cool in colour, like melting vanilla ice cream, in contrast to the luridly bright works of Wealleans’ early practice.
Wealleans has gained recognition in recent years for the technique he has developed of thickly layering different coloured paint which is left till dry then worked back into, either by the seemingly violent action of cutting lacerations into the paint, peeling and pinning them back or by using paint as a medium to be carved into small sculptural elements. Cold Comfort incorporates both of these techniques. The small indentations of the surface are achieved by slicing away layers of paint, revealing his process of production and making mini tectonic cross sections.
The central garland form suspended from Cold Comfort is made from a string of multi-coloured paint chunks. This vibrantly coloured motif developed through Wealleans’ ‘Ritual Paintings’ series, where he produced faux artefacts suggestive of Pacific Island leis. However, Wealleans has explained that the content of the painting serves merely as a framework to explore material concerns—that is, the possibilities of paint.
There is often a sexual undercurrent in Weallans’ paintings, the layers of paint build up to a tacky almost flesh-like matter and the artist has described his relationship to paint as ‘a kind of meat factory orgy’. Whether Wealleans’ future directions will take him towards more figurative, or more abstract avenues of enquiry is unknown, but for now his enthusiasm for the properties of paint seem inexhaustible.
Jessica Reid
Rohan Wealleans artist bio:
Born Invercargill, 1977
Lives and works in Auckland
Bachelor of Fine Arts, Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland; Master of Fine Arts, Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland
Selected solo exhibitions include: 'Tatunka', Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin (2006); 'Pegd', Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington (2005); 'Albino', Ivan Anthony Gallery, Auckland (2004).
Selected group exhibitions include: ‘Stolen Ritual’, Roslyn Oxley9 gallery, Sydney, Australia (2006); ‘Metaphysics of youth’, Fuoriso, Pascara, Italy (2006); ‘Hotbed’, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Dunedin (2005).
Image credits:
Rohan Wealleans
Cold Comfort 2006
paint, polystyrene, fibreglass and string
Courtesy of the artist and Hamish McKay Gallery, Wellington