Kirsten Fitzwell - Almost 15th Oct- end of January 18a Gallery Response by Luke Heal There’s a place on North Indian Canyon Drive, Palm Springs, California called the Movie Colony Hotel. It’s a place of “vintage Hollywood glamour…a fashionable oasis in the Sonoran Desert… a study in modernism and minimalist architecture… a celebration of vintage style and forward-thinking hospitality”. I know this because, backing on to the Warehouse, behind Mag and Turbo, over the way from Spike’s Mechanical Nelson, you can find the 18a Gallery and inside is Kirsten Fitzwell’s first solo exhibition Almost, which includes a painting of the Movie Hotel. The gallery is a small white room behind oxidised aluminium shop doors at the top of a concrete ramp. Fourteen small oil and acrylic paintings currently hang there, each one a recreation of an online marketing photo selling a holiday dream. Paintings of pristine swimming pools attended to by regiments of crisply upholstered deckchairs, whitewashed stucco walls, palms, banana trees and groomed lawns. One presents rows of curtains hanging in a decorative roofless pagoda, the folds of each one paired down in an identical knot, lifted slightly here and there by air unfelt by human skin. When seeing all the works at once in the gallery, it registers that there is no one in any of the pictures. Seeing one work alone, the impression might be a literal intent by the artist to represent a nice villa or hotel. But seen together in the gallery, arranged with considered misalignment, a sense of unease creeps in. Fitzwell’s swimming pools recall the paintings of David Hockney - both are cast in inertial sunlight as if in resin. But Hockney’s pools are punctuated by splashes, and sometimes inhabited by swimmers or onlookers - there is life and movement. It is difficult to imagine anyone swimming in the finely observed, cut-glass pools of Almost. Difficult even to imagine a human being could exist in this crystalized holiday dimension. The pools are well dosed with chlorine before every tourist season. The eye yearns for a forgotten glass, a ball or toy, a magazine or book, a bird or insect. There are no children running across these lawns, no people snoozing in the deckchairs, the laughter of sun-stung holiday makers does not drift through the tipsy evenings here. The works have hot pink reverse sides that cause a diffuse reflection on the white gallery wall, cleverly framing each work with a slight aura. Rosy tones predominate, like the blush of future memories, a nostalgic longing for experiences we have not had - yet. The gentle brush strokes are so different from the emitted light of a pixel screen, the squinty shoulder-knotting experience of a cell phone. The treatment is imperfect, human. One work is almost impressionistic in its approximation. Another has the scratchy sepia feel of an old photo or lithograph. These mansions and hotels are beautiful, the grounds immaculate. It reminds me of a time when friends rented a villa in Tuscany and came back with tales of eating pine nuts straight from the garden. I didn’t really identify with that particular dream, but I was jealous. I wanted to be there in that special place, if only for a few days. It would create a hefty memory and a worthwhile anecdote that would punctuate the timeline of life (“I went to Tuscany and stayed in this beautiful old villa, they had real pine nut trees, it was amaaazing”). Never mind the stress of travel, soon forgotten. Booking.com, Airbnb, Tripadvisor, Expedia, Trivago and others clamour on the screen, should we enter a key word or two that lets on our predilection. Holiday experiences are so commodified that the same night in the same bed can be sold at slightly different margins by dozens of automated systems. I tried doing a reverse image search using an image of one of the paintings. The results were striking: a collage of every configuration of modernist white box, liquid blue trapezoid, all with the terracotta/stucco glow, fluffy clouds - and regiments of deck chairs, always the deck chairs. Such online possibilities raise tickling questions about the artistic process. If the viewer can go online and see the source material, is that problematic? Perhaps an exhibition that responds to something could even include what that something is - in this case, the source images, or links to them. I wonder how landscape painters feel now that viewers can access every scene they paint from satellite, street view, or an almost infinite mosaic of selfies. Wharariki beach in Golden bay is photographed nearly every day, and has ended up as the lock screen for computers all around the world, yet people still paint it. Going online, you could see the 388 images of the Movie Colony Hotel. You could see for yourself how the gently painted works of Almost differ to their online source material. You could decide if the artist is making a subtle protest that asks questions of the global trade in holiday dreams, or commenting on how we tell ourselves that we can be fulfilled by fleeting visits to desirable residences in exotic locations. Hell, you could even book a holiday at the Hollywood Colony - it’s surprisingly reasonable and has great reviews. I wouldn’t turn down a weekend there if I had the choice. Besides that pool I could be happy, living my best life. Almost. 18a Project Space
18a Vanguard St Nelson Open Fri 11-4 Sat 11-2 or By appointment Kirsten Fitzwell (Fitzsimons) (@kirstenfitzwell) • Instagram photos and videos https://www.facebook.com/kirsten.fitzsimons Photo courtesy 18a Project Space https://www.instagram.com/18a_vanguard/?hl=en https://www.facebook.com/18aVanguard
1 Comment
4/18/2023 04:21:40 pm
Thank you Luke Heal for capturing ALMOST by Kirsten Fitzwell so well - your writing felt like the responses the show received from the public. References to external viewer feelings such as 'Difficult even to imagine a human being could exist in this crystalized holiday dimension.' or 'Seeing one work alone, the impression might be a literal intent by the artist to represent a nice villa or hotel. But seen together in the gallery, arranged with considered misalignment, a sense of unease creeps in.' Too that for some these paintings acted as reminders, either of places they spent a holiday or places the originally inhabited before coming to New Zealand. ALMOST was as intended by the artists and here captured by Cause for Discussions - a platform that has an important value, critical writing about local artists - to make them available to an even broader audience.
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