Artist finds little positive in negative spaces of Wgtn

Artist finds little positive in negative spaces of Wellington and Hastings

Wellington artist Daniel Unverricht’s exhibition Negative Space is as much about unsettling urban and suburban spaces in Wellington and Hastings as it is about the empty night-time darkness that surrounds them.

Unverricht’s small and highly detailed realist oil paintings draw on small town inertia and big city insecurity. His nocturnal scenes are familiar spaces filled with dark hiding-places that inspire unease in the viewer due to their lack of human presence.

Distant neon-signed oases of fast food restaurants and service stations cut through the darkness with the prospect of human interaction. Dimly lit empty spaces are often claustrophobically confined. Both draw their power from the narrative each viewer brings to the work; the fear of dangers that lurk in the dark, the fear of being a victim.

Unverricht’s night imagery of Police cars, suburban drive ways, back yard swimming pools, pubs and main streets draw on urban and suburban anxiety: as cities grow so does the sense of night time danger; as suburbia grows so does our isolation.

From Hastings, Unverricht has lived in Wellington for the past seven years. Like most artists he works part-time, as gallery assistant at Peter McLeavey Gallery, Wellington.

He has an MFA from the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland.

Unverricht was runner-up for the BMW Art Awards. He has been a finalist in many art awards including the Trust Waikato National Contemporary Art Award, Wallace Art Awards, Nokia Arts Awards Asia Pacific, Waikato National Art Award, National Drawing Award and Norsewear Art Award. He has twice won the Hawke's Bay Art Review supreme award and was also twice runner-up for this award. His work has been included in solo and group private shows and in public art gallery exhibitions including Auckland City New Gallery, AK05, the Hawke’s Bay Museum and Kyoto University Art Gallery, Japan.

His works are in the collection of the Hawke’s Bay Museum and the Wallace Arts Trust.

Negative Space runs from 5 - 28 February at 30upstairs Gallery, 30 Courtenay Place, Wellington. The public opening is on Wednesday 4 February 2015, from 5.30 - 7.30pm.

Negative Space
Daniel Unverricht (www.danielunverricht.com)
5-28 February, 2015
opening Wed 4 Feb, 5.30 - 7.30pm
30upstairs Gallery
30 Courtenay Place, Wellington
www.30upstairs.co.nz

ENDS

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