Colour real and imagined | David Serisier

Opening tonight, Drill Hall Gallery gives prominence to Australian abstract painter David Serisier in a survey of his most current works, and a selection from the last two decades.

Conceiving an installation that navigates what Serisier calls ‘digital colour’, Serisier’s latest practice is interested in the high-keyed, incandescent chroma derived from cinema images that have been digitally sampled. The customized, multi-panelled paintings are arresting as they pulsate with pattern and bright ‘digital’ colour.

An artist that closely identifies with American Abstraction, Serisier was a resident in New York during his formative years in the late 1980s – early 1990s. It was the influence of late-modernist art from Rothko and Newman to Marden and Flavin that inspired the zest, clarity and grandeur typical of his paintings.

Alongside the central gallery, the two side galleries will focus on the historical background of the installation and Serisier’s practice.

Striking in his choice of colour choice and pattern, Serisier’s rigourous exploration of scale in his works is constantly pushing artistic boundaries in colour and abstraction.

Discussing what preoccupies his practice as a whole, Serisier commented to Sebastian Goldspink, Australia Design Review, stating “I’m interested in how colour relates to the everyday, even though the colours are sourced from high artist colour systems, it’s the ephemeral event as captured and presented by digital systems and various processes of re-formation.”

The exhibition will be officially launched by Dr Stephen Little, Head of Painting, National Art School, Sydney, tonight at 6pm.

You can join the artist for a free talk about his painting and influences this Friday 14 August at 12 noon.

EXHIBITION
Colour real imagined | David Serisier
14 August – 20 September
Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra

Image: David Serisier, untitled yellow and blue fluorescent light painting

Courtesy the artist and Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra.