Apperceptions
A half gallery exhibition of paintings, mosaics & fabric collage by
Liza Merkalova, Ivan Rehorek & Caroline Rehorek
16 April – 9 May (HALF GALLERY)
Artists Liza Merkalova, Ivan Rehorek and Caroline Rehorek look inward in their thought-provoking new exhibition. The artists are inspired through the intriguing title Apperceptions, which means to see in terms of past experience. ‘Our dreams are a journey into the places we once knew, or maybe haven’t been to so far. People we knew and loved are also there, as are all the people we haven’t met yet. Here we represent these apperceptions, the parts of our own stories – our lives past and yet-to-be are all present here – so welcome to the parade!’
Liza Merkalova
People exist as a reflection and recognition of already familiar emotions. Their faces are easy to read and paint; it’s like remembering my own mood in different times. The paint is familiar too; colour manipulation is a way to figure out the balance and harmony between the seen and unseen.
Acute suffering is deep shades of blue; piercing happiness comes in different kinds of red; inside my privacy is the moon; the trees are mere vitality; all the houses are lost homeland.
I would consider each painting a success if you allowed yourself to spend one minute in front of something that took a lifelong process to complete.
Caroline Rehorek
My grandfather manufactured women’s clothing for his fashion shops in Adelaide. The fabric sample books fascinated me, with all the slight variations of colours and patterns. I loved to use the treasured pieces in making art. Then, during art school days, I made puppets for my husband Ivan’s children’s theatre company.
Over the past twenty years I have worked in stained glass. The work that I present here is akin to stained glass design because it is about simplifying shapes so that the colours and textures of the fabrics can be experienced in their integrity.
Ivan Rehorek
It’s always been about colours and sounds with me, and how they all run and play with each other. Just like the shapes between words, or the defined steps between musical notes, these events we always see through a glass, darkly, of our own unique and singular experiences.
My funky buildings do not actually exist anywhere, they are models and theatre settings I’d started long ago and far away, in dreams and childhood memories.
They are, in a sense, a condition of the heart. But now, it seems they have finally manifested in three dimensions, having gone through various other stages like lino-prints and paintings and other such happenings – and here they are, with their hinted-at but unwritten histories and narratives and traditions: and as yet unseen inhabitants.