About the work

Exhibition beauties & BEASTS
Wednesday, 31 October 2001 6-8 pm until 24 November 2001
at BOUTWELL DRAPER GALLERY
84 George Street, Redfern. 2016 Sydney, AUSTRALIA
boutwell-draper@lycos.com

For the series beauties & BEASTS, Martin Mlecko employed a very dialectic method of visualisation. He juxtaposed photographs, which were taken recently on a journey to Sydney and Melbourne, with monochromatic graphic elements, framing the images with two strips of colour, and, on the other hand, interrupting the colour fields with a photographic insert. In times when the possibilities of altering an image without trace are manifold, the conspicuousness of this manipulation is rather unsettling. We are not used to see bold blocks of colour together with photographic images. Photographs always appear to be documentary, to be honest depictions of a real situation, while monochromatic surfaces are rooted in a more painterly realm; they are perceived as artificial. In these panels, these two elements are combined and are intertwined. Their surface is the same, just the colours are different. We have learned to read photographic images as representations of three-dimensional spaces, and can imagine their depth, whilst we usually read monochromatic colour fields as planes, even though they can be much deeper.

The photographs are cropped, and their narrative is broken. We can guess what could be depicted in the parts that are now filled with brilliant colour fields, yet we could not know. The narrative is contested by an aesthetic concept. The homeless man is almost fading against the bright red planes. The aesthetic intervention interferes with our perception.

The motifs of beauties & BEASTS seem to be almost accidental snap-shots, taken on a holiday - a beautiful landscape here and a landmark there, loungers in a garden and people at the sea. The bold and bright colours add to this carefree perception. Yet, as whole they offer a more panoramic view, of buildings and nature, of people and of our environment, including the homeless and the pretty coloured containers on a ship, which lately have become symbols for the misery of refugees. Martin Mlecko confronts us with commonplaces and with beautiful images, yet the secrets are always nearby. Behind the photographs and behind the colours, many additional layers are hiding. Beauty is never complete without a contrasting reality and the beast can never be beast when seen on its own.

Text by Axel Lapp