2014 Borgelt: It just keeps getting better (Exhibition Review)

Titled So Near So Far, there is nothing half-glass empty about this exhibition.

This is Marion Borgelt’s third exhibition with Dominik Mersch Gallery and the inaugural show to launch its new space at Rushcutters Bay, which sits atop an auto-repair shop in a light-filled industrial building.

Borgelt’s new work sings to the space. Described as ‘an exploration of duality and the ever-shifting power dynamics of nature and the universe’, her work continues to place an emphasis on cycles and repetition.

Known for her spliced and twisted canvas works, which create a dynamic and optical experience for viewers, these pieces sit in conversation with Bogelt’s new strobe paintings, along with an extended play of her orbs or lunar discs as the new Tsukimi series, and an exciting development that fuses these three aspects of Borgelt’s work, a series titled Lune Lumina Nos. 9-15.

Made this year, these kind of nipple-like targets render space and depth imperceptible. Typically, they are exquisite technically – a signure of Borgelt’s practice.

Borgelt’s large oil paintings punctuate the exhibition; her new series of Persian Strobes seemingly ripple off the surface. Writer Mia Pinjuh said, ‘Borgelt investigates the power of the play of light and refraction on a large scale’ in her paintings.

Borgelt is one of Australia’s great contemporary artists, whose work in recent years has been receiving the attention it deserves. In 2010 the Drill Hall Gallery at the Australian National University presented a 15-year survey Marion Borgelt: Mind & Matter, and this exhibition is a strong look at her current practice.