John Reynolds on Radio New Zealand
With his exhibition In the street l was lost… John Reynolds extends his ‘Lost Hours’ series, which began by pondering the Colin McCahon’s disappearance in Sydney on the eve of his Biennale retrospective in 1984.
Reynolds traverses a parallel landscape across a magnificent panoramic painting. He becomes the wanderer, leaving a trail of silver lines which track and map through a drifting entanglement of location, time and memory. Viewers easily slips into similar meanderings, losing themselves in their own meditative journeying.
Reynolds paints, draws and writes with a light touch. Each gesture is fresh and the work is open-ended. Amongst text, written in pencil directly on the wall, Reynolds quotes Francis Bacon: ‘The job of the artist is to deepen the mystery.’
Through a series of works on paper Reynolds quotes John Gribbin who, in his introduction to quantum physics, ‘Six Impossible Things’, wrote that we might understand the mysteriousness of our world with six fundamental ‘solaces’, beginning with: The world does not exist unless you look at it.
John Reynolds is a skilled artist. This visually rich exhibition has depth without weight and is well worth the immersive viewing a visit to the gallery would afford.