OREXART. Oedipus Rex Gallery. Auckland, New Zealand.

ROGER HICKIN

In front of the door a man is singing
4 April - 5 May 2006

This current series of work by Roger Hickin is based around a chapter of San Juan de la Cruz, The Ascent of Mount Carmel. The artist has chosen fragments of the text as starting points for these subtle, contemplative works which possess a deeply spiritual aesthetic.

To quote David Howard from his Art New Zealand article "Hickin's works inhabit -- and are inhabited by -- silence". Like McCahon and Hotere before him, Hickin "transforms private contradictions into public metaphors."

So That We May Journey Onwards
acrylic & graphite on board 845 x 127 cm

Artist statement

"I'm as lost as you are. The kind of art I sometimes get to practise is evidence of an often faltering belief in the capacity of the almost-nothing to embody the almost-everything. An attempt to reach Eliot's "condition of complete implicity, costing not less than everything". Sometimes an impossibility, sometimes we get there in spite of ourselves. As my friend David Howard points out: "there is more than surface to be worked".

Roger Hickin

Wherever You Go You Need A Door (farewell Steve Lacy)
acrylic & graphite on board 36 x 29 cm

One for San Juan
acrylic & graphite on board 36 x 29 cm

My House Being Now at Rest
acrylic & graphite on board 62 x 52 cm

Baeza-Ubeda
acrylic & graphite on board 62 x 52 cm

The Door By Me if Any
acrylic & graphite on board 62 x 52 cm

Clinging to Anything We Shall Lose Our Way
acrylic & graphite on board 62 x 52 cm

The above works are only a selection of those in the exhibition.

Roger Hickin was born in Invercargill in 1951. He has been painting and exhibiting in galleries throughout New Zealand since 1986. His work are represented in the collections of the The Christchurch Art Gallery, Te Puna o Waiwhetu , the Sarjeant Gallery (Wanganui), and the Bath House Museum (Rotorua). His subtle and contemplative paintings and constructions possess a deeply spritual aesthetic.

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