Paul Zika
Curator Jacob Leary
Contemporary Art Tasmania
27 Tasma Street
North Hobart, Tasmania 7000
Exhibition August 13 – 21 2016
Curators Statement
The 2∞ installation is the product of a series of back and forth encounters and excursions into the practise of Paul Zika. These meetings were defined by various stages of resistances and convergences, and a relationship to details which moved from the more abstract and general to the highly particular. Shuffling through Paul’s oeuvre from the last 40 years, my focus eventually settled on work from Paul’s first ever solo show, Screen Prints at Chapman Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne (1973) to his most recent stream of geometric constructions. In the process of dismantling this work digitally to isolate certain pictorial elements from the rest, it occurred that simple formal aspects of Paul’s practise had in certain ways come full circle in the reoccurrence of particular geometric motifs and echoes of a similar colouring system. In many ways the new collaborative work in the installation is quite simple, an almost direct inversion (of sorts) to reveal these shapes in the empty of spaces of Paul’s sculptural paintings. The results of this skewed mirroring has then been arranged and composed in a way to extend and pay homage to the type of pictorial space Paul’s work produces. 2∞ as a title, is in a sense an attempt to capture something about these previously described processes, the space they create and the formal language of Paul’s work. Jacob Leary
This project has been assisted by the University of Tasmania through the Digital Fabrication Laboratory at TCotA. Special thanks to Phillip Blacklow. Paul Zika is represented by Stephen McLaughlan Gallery, Melbourne and Penny Contemporary, Hobart. Jacob Leary is represented by Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne.