PRAKASH PATEL

Orient
22 July - 9 August 2008

Prakash Patel was born in New Zealand in 1968. Since graduating with a Diploma in Visual Arts and Design at Hawkes Bay Polytechnic in 1993, he has exhibited widely in New Zealand.

Patel's paintings make expressive use of colour and pattern, achieved through a meticulously restrained dot technique. In the repetitious fading of bright, iridescent colours into the dark, inky background that saturates his works, Patel creates a rippling, rhythmic energy and a sense of these organic forms fading through the dimensionality of the image. The result is twofold: a repetitive and ultimately hypnotic emphasis of space within the bounds of the canvas and a direct allusion to the intricacy, colour, spiritual and mystical themes of Indian culture - the result of Patel's expression of cultural affinity within the structure of contemporary NZ painting.

Patel is also the creator of site-specific installation works, such as the 280 panel 'Satellite' at The Globe Gallery in Napier. He has been an annual finalist in the James Wallace Trust Art Awards, and in January 2006 he took up the Sanskriti Residency in Delhi, India. Prakash lives in Wanganui.

- Paul Field