2015 'Retrospektiv', Pataka, 'Wanderlust', Orexart

Retrospektiv features a selection of Rastorfer’s painting from 2007-2009, and includes some of her largest work to date.

Rastorfer explores of the nature of painting, the contradictions inherent in the painted surface and the role of serendipity in the creation of her works. Drawing on the history of abstraction, Rastorfer challenges the flatness of the painted surface and the materials she uses. Her layered mark-making creates depth where there is none and movement of a static medium on a fixed plane.

Along with the careful layering of paint and pigment, Rastorfer embraces unintentional occurrences that arise from intrinsic variables in her materials. Spontaneous variances in width, tone and form lend the swirls a sense of organic growth as well as emphasising surface movement and energy. The vagaries of transience and chance have occupied Rastorfer for a number of years and she uses painterly gesture combined with ‘visual incidents’ to create works that appear to capture a single moment in time.

Each painting displays an elegant unity of rhythm, form and tone that at once pleases the eye and invites contemplation of the artist’s concepts. Illustrating the paradox of a continual yet unmoving flux, the complexity of Lorraine Rastorfer’s paintings allows the works to be seen anew over and again.

National Contemporary Art Awards
Selected Finalist
Waikato Museum

17 July - 1 November 2015

Nexus (2015), Acrylic on wooden panel, 1800 x 1200mm, $8,000 (Available from Auckland)

Finalist in the Parkin Drawing Prize
Parkin Drawing Prize
NZ Academy of Fine Arts, Queens Wharf, Wellington
11 August - 13 September 2015

Please see my blog on this site for discussion on this award
For more information about the award exhibition click here

Wanderlust
Solo Exhibition
OREXART Gallery
Auckland
2015

Photos from opening on Arts Diary Website
click here

An essay written by Becky Hemus featured in the 2015/16 Art NZ periodical on this exhibition can be found here.