作者：维多利亚•海因斯艺术编辑兼作家
中文翻译：李惊蛰
展出时间：2023年9月21日至10月7日
开幕庆典：9月21日星期四， 下午6点至8点
Arthouse Gallery
地址：
66 McLochan Ave. Rushcutter Bay NSW 2011
迪恩• 霍穆新呈现的绘画总是令人期待和享受的时刻。他的艺术创作过程和生成以缓慢和细致而闻名。通过这次抒情的展览“我花园里的白云”，让艺术家再次沉醉于感官世界，就像空气和水一样，这是他的世界观的基础。这位杰出的画家在艺术和生活中都受到感官美的启发。无论是品尝法国葡萄酒，聆听巴赫协奏曲，还是沉思一首中国诗，这位艺术家都可以被认为是一个真正的唯美主义者和通感者。作为静物画派的大师，霍姆以其华丽而精致的花卉构图而闻名，但他当然不认为自己只是一个简单的“画花的画家”。
这位艺术家最重要的灵感来自东方和西方，受到意大利巴洛克绘画和中国古代陶瓷等多种影响。他的艺术静态场景通常被描述为“超真实”，但它们提供了一种高度的静物体验，似乎拥抱了所有的感官。突出呈现盛开的鲜亮花朵 ——他最近尤为喜爱的牡丹。这些华丽的作品通常包括精美的织物、石头、贝壳和其他物品，这些物品可以增强画作的感官愉悦感。观众几乎可以触摸到丝绸织物的滑润，中国瓷碗的光亮凉爽，触摸轻微退色的花瓣的柔软。通过这种触觉，霍穆激活了静物画流派。
就像乔治•莫兰迪和他的绘画过程一样，霍穆在他的静物作品中是非常有精选的。每件物品都需要对他有一些个人的或隐喻的意义。就像视觉冥想一样，这些画作暗示了“触觉时间”。这些古老的瓷器材料经得起时间的考验，但也会被风化、破裂和磨损，而刚刚绽放的花朵则揭示了有机物质的短暂性和生命的短暂性。
霍穆来自西澳的巴舍尔顿，在珀斯的科廷大学学习，1981年毕业，成为一名具象画家。经过近20年的实践，接近40岁的时候，艺术家搬到了墨尔本，他觉得自己仍然没有找到适合自己风格和视野的流派。后来一次罗马之行改变了他的整个做法。在参观波勒盖塞别墅画廊时，他看到了卡拉瓦乔的画作《提着一篮水果的男孩》。他发现自己的注意力不再集中在男孩的中心人物身上，而是集中在水果的摆放上。这个简单的即兴决定，改变了他从画人物到画静物的轨迹。这是一个明智的举动，因为画家现在已经在澳大利亚主要州、地区举办了50多次个人展览，他的作品的私人收藏者海内外兼具。
近二十年来，这位艺术家在墨尔本的各种拍卖会上收集中国古董器皿。不知何故，他感觉到这些古老的碗的本质或精神传递给了他，并影响了他的审美选择。它们的形式激发了他的新创作，然而他用想象中的风景来装饰这些器皿。因此，他的分层作品作为一种静物题材的风景画。这些“虚构”的景观来自他对南亚景观的想象，主要以山脉和水为特征，传统上被视为精神力量和智慧的源泉。
在他的作品《水声》(The Roar of Water)中，艺术家画了一条瀑布，从一个物体上流下来，然后流到另一个物体上，直到它变成一条河，然后一条温和的小溪流到一个简单的杯子上，杯子上装饰着一个养着两条金鱼的小池塘。在这幅名为《回家的路上》(On the Path Home)的画作中，一对1800年初的珐琅中国茶罐，上面装饰一条蜿蜒的小路，通向一所小房子，代表了一种回到他的西部小镇童年的精神之旅。
回家的过程漫长而艰辛。他陈述说，即使是他最小的画也必须包含一个精致的诗意矩阵。霍穆的神奇之处在于一个炼金术过程，在此过程中，先涂上一层温暖的深色油漆，然后刮磨，直到形成一种神秘的品质，为图像增加了共鸣的深度。霍穆强调说:“我经常对人们讲，‘这个过程是把整幅画从说话变成了唱歌’。”
这种“明暗对比”效果也丰富了构图的戏剧性和戏剧元素。借鉴中国山水美学、东方图案和巴洛克戏剧，霍穆找到了自己独特的视觉，古典与现代、精神与感性并存。他认为自己的作品是短小精悍的视觉诗。正是在他的绘画对象的精细校准中，存在着一种普遍的知识、和谐或智慧。
霍穆对罗马有着深厚的感情，他是罗马的常客。意大利生活的活力给他带来了强烈的活力，而中国的艺术和诗歌似乎使他的思想平静下来。也许正是这种沉静与活泼的结合，使他的作品在视觉上如此引人注目。随着时间的推移，这些精心整理的图像变得越来越简单和安静。他的调色板在当前的系列中更加柔和，揭示了一种新的沉思和反思，这可能与时间的流逝和最近失去父母有关。这位艺术家补充说:“回首过去，当你美丽的时候，或者当世界还年轻、还可以利用的时候，会有一种时间上的和转变的感觉。”
这些“视觉诗”呈现了永恒与短暂、尘世之美与精神超越之间的微妙平衡。这些作品超越了现实，成为对时间变迁、艺术与自然普遍性联系的思考。现年61岁的迪恩•霍姆的深邃、沉思的艺术实践，可能会在未来变得更丰富、更有意义。
图片及文章获 Arthouse Gallery授权
版权©️Arthouse Gallery
英文原文：
D E A N H O M E
White Clouds in my Garden
21 September – 7 October 2023
Opening Celebration,
Thursday 21 September, 6 – 8 pm
A new presentation of paintings by Dean Home is always an occasion to anticipate and relish; his artistic process and output renowned for being slow and meticulous. With this lyrical exhibition ‘White Clouds in my Garden’, the artist again revels in the sensory world, which is as fundamental to his world view as air and water. This distinguished painter is inspired by sensual beauty in both art and life. Whether it be savouring a French wine, listening to a Bach concerto or contemplating a Chinese poem, the artist could be considered a true aesthete and synesthete. A master of the still life genre, Home is renowned for his luxuriant yet delicate floral compositions, but he certainly does not regard himself simply as a ‘flower painter’.
The artist’s foremost inspirations come from both East and West, drawing upon influences as varied as Italian baroque painting and ancient Chinese ceramics. His artistic tableaux have regularly been described as ‘super-real’, but rather they offer a heightened experience of still life, that seems to embrace all the senses. Featuring arrangements of luminous flowers in bloom - his most recent passion being peonies - these opulent compositions often include fine fabrics, stones, shells and other items that enhance the sensory pleasure of the painting. The viewer can almost touch the silken fabric, the cool, polished surface of a Chinese bowl, or the soft touch of the slightly faded flower petals. Through these tactile means Home reinvigorates the still life genre.
Like Giorgio Morandi and his painting process Home is very select in his groupings of objects for a still life. Each object needs to hold some personal or metaphoric meaning for him. Like visual meditations, the paintings allude to ‘tactile time’. The ancient porcelain references materials that endure over time, but can be weathered, cracked and worn, while the flowers - just past their moment of bloom - reveal the ephemeral nature of organic matter and the transient nature of life.
Originally from Busselton in WA, Home studied at Curtin University in Perth, graduating in 1981 as a figurative painter. After nearly two decades of practice and approaching 40, the artist, having relocated to Melbourne, felt he still had not found a genre that fitted his style and vision. Then a trip to Rome altered his entire practice. Visiting the Villa Borghese gallery, he came across the Caravaggio painting Boy with a Basket of Fruit. He found his attention focused not on the central figure of the boy, but on the arrangement of fruit instead. This simple impromptu decision changed his trajectory from painting the figure to painting still life. It was a sage move as the painter has now over fifty solo exhibitions to his credit and is represented in major state, regional and private collections both in Australia and overseas.
For close to two decades, the artist has collected antique Chinese vessels at various auctions in Melbourne. He somehow perceives that the essence or spirit of these age-old bowls transmits itself to him and influences his aesthetic choices. Their forms inspire his new creations, however he decorates these wares with the landscapes of his imagination. His layered works therefore operate as landscape paintings within a still life genre. These ‘invented’ landscapes come from his imaginings of Southern Asian vistas and primarily feature mountains and water, traditionally seen as a source of spiritual power and wisdom.
In his work, The Roar of Water, the artist literally paints a waterfall running off one object and then onto another, until it becomes a river, then a gentle stream flowing onto a simple cup ornamented with a small pond holding two goldfish. In the painting, On the Path Home, a pair of timeworn enamel Chinese tea caddies from the early 1800s are adorned with a winding pathway leading to a small house, representing a kind of spiritual journey back to the small house, representing a kind of spiritual journey back to the small town of his Western Australian childhood.
Home’s process is long and painstaking. He comments that even the smallest of his paintings must contain a delicate poetic matrix. The magic for Home lies in an alchemical process, in which a warm dark layer of paint is applied, then scraped back until an enigmatic quality is achieved that adds a resonant depth to the image. Home remarks that: “I often say to people, ‘It moves the whole painting from talking to singing’.”
This ‘chiaroscuro’ effect also enriches the drama and theatrical element of the composition. Drawing on Chinese landscape aesthetics, oriental motifs and baroque drama, Home has found his own unique vision that is both classical and contemporary, spiritual and sensual. He sees his works as short, assembled visual poems. It is in the delicate calibration of his painted objects that a kind of universal knowledge, harmony or wisdom resides.
Home has a great affection for Rome, where he is a regular visitor. He is strongly animated by the vitality of Italian life, whereas Chinese art and poetry seems to still his mind. Perhaps it is this combination of stillness and vivacity that makes his works so visually compelling. These carefully curated images have grown simpler and quieter over time. His colour palette is more muted with this current series, revealing a new found pensiveness and reflection, that could be related to the passage of time and the recent loss of a parent. The artist adds: “The pensiveness of looking back in time, at when you were beautiful or when the world was young and available, there's this sensation of time and transition.”
These ‘visual poems’ present a fine balance between the eternal and the ephemeral, earthly beauty and spiritual transcendence. The works escalate beyond the real, becoming meditations on the transition of time and the universal connection of art and nature. Now at age 61, one can only envision that Dean Home’s deep, contemplative art practice will likely grow richer and more meaningful in time to come.
Victoria Hynes, Arts Editor & Writer
Translation by Ginger Li, Artist and Writer of Chinese language
