Newcombe’s paintings use an extensive colour palette applied in a complex process described as kinetic. With a background in theatre, his interest in bringing visual arts and performance together, through a process of art-making and working with elements of endurance in making his work is evident. Broad marks build a density of forms, finishing with small flecked lines, with colour and mass playing optically against a circle or square.
By lining the walls of the gallery, the results reveal an aesthetic paradox: if repetition repudiates beauty, how is it that Newcombe’s repetition of a specific set of performative and painterly gestures has produced a body of work that is so remarkably, even disturbingly, alluring?
fortyfivedownstairs
Until 10 August, 2013
Melbourne
The Daunt, 2012, acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100cm
Courtesy the artist and fortyfivedownstairs
