Mikhail Gherman: 'The Captains Series' @ Orexart

21 – 24 March. Orexart has the pleasure of presenting ‘The Captains Series’, an exhibition of paintings by Mikhail Gherman.

Gherman majored in painting and design at Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland in the 1980s. Since leaving art school, he’s worked as a creative director in fashion and advertising, including as the Co-Founder and Creative Director of Karen Walker.

‘The Captains Series’ is a collision of some of Gherman’s perennial obsessions: outsiders, junkshop art genres, solitary men, and a news cycle bursting with violence.

Gherman has made hundreds of paintings of weather-worn, hirsute captains, all superficially alike yet completely unique. The intensity of the captains’ gaze is heightened by the diminutive scale of the works: a mere 52mm x 35mm. Closer inspection reveals these canvases are, in fact, Beehive matchboxes, adding combustibility and danger to the already-present power of the captains themselves.

The paintings’ subjects have been raised within codes of masculinity so strict that the captains possess remarkable similarities, both in their appearance and their gruff mien. Even so, Gherman’s work also shows these codes aren’t enough to contain the captains, whose assumed camaraderie occasionally explodes into vicious all-out brawls. In attempting to destroy each other, are these almost-identical men also waging war against themselves?

The work will be on display for four days only, from Thursday 21 to Sunday 24 March. For further information email rex@orexart.co.nz

www.orexart.co.nz

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Published: March 2024