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JOHN REYNOLDS ‘In the street I was lost…’ suite of 12 paintings on paper 1-24 November 2022


In the street I was lost... #1, John Reynolds, 2020 painting, Oil paint marker and acrylic on paper, 700 x 500mm, (SOLD)
In the street I was lost... #7, John Reynolds, 2020 painting, Oil paint marker and acrylic on paper, 700 x 500mm, (SOLD) In the street I was lost... #11, John Reynolds, 2020 painting, Oil paint marker and acrylic on paper, 700 x 500mm, (SOLD) 'In the street I was lost... #12' by John Reynolds, 2020 oil paint marker and acrylic on paper, (SOLD)

These 12 paintings on paper were part of ‘In the street I was lost …‘, an exhibition first shown in 2020 which was dominated by an epic 7.4 metre painting of the same name. Unfortunately the exhibition opened on the very day Aotearoa New Zealand first went into lockdown so was unseen. The recent WIDE group exhibition provided opportunity to show the large painting. The works on paper get their moment now.

They are part of John Reynolds’ ongoing ‘Lost Hours’ series, which pondered the fateful disappearance of Colin McCahon in Sydney on the eve of his Biennial retrospective, I Will Need Words, in early April 1984. In the big works Reynolds mapped disorientation and blurred geographies. Elongated criss-crossing motifs suggested precarious architectural profiles, or frayed lines from a ‘stairway to heaven’ tukutuku panel, signalling perhaps a kind of nervy or cryptic GPS historiography. The works on paper explore more restricted terrain. A field of undulating paint is contained on a solid background of colour, over drawn with zigzags of silver, spots of colour, incident. Each sheet appears to record the experience of a fleeting moment.

 

John Reynolds lives and works in Auckland and over the past three decades has established a reputation as a painter, a drawer, a worker or words and an installation artist. His work is rich with literary, religious, art historical and architectural allusions and ranges in scale from the intimate to epic. Reynold’s paintings, drawings and prints utilise materials in an expressive manner that moves between sensuality and austerity. His work is suggestive and evades locked meaning. It has the fluidity of the human mind.