In No title, No body, No thing, Patrick Lundberg presents a selection of minimal abstract wall works, adapted to the gallery space at Whangārei Art Museum. In this exhibition, Lundberg asks the viewer to consider their own habits when engaging with art, as his works demand close inspection to be fully appreciated. Despite the small size of their individual components, they also require that the viewer visually traverses the entire terrain of the gallery to take in their scope.
These works can be broken down into three categories: first, a group of works that consist of a network or skein of small, rounded or faceted painted components made of a variety of materials; second, a series of vertical-format works on narrow strips of material that function somewhat more like traditional paintings; and third, a series of small, cylindrical wall works, also painted.
The pin-like wall works cover large areas of the gallery, circumscribing expansive zones while also opening out into the surrounding architecture. These works tempt the viewer to consider each element as a micro-painting, due to their bright colours and decorative, often expressive patterns and designs, but they also draw their attention to the voids and distances between each element. The implied connections between each point take on a new significance when viewed as a whole, like constellations in the night sky.
Meanwhile, the vertical works, by pushing the physical dimensions of the painting to its logical extreme, playfully question expectations and conventions around the format. Again, their dimensions require that they be viewed close-up, or else dissolve into an indistinct slash on the wall. Due to their essentially linear format, their oscillating patterns ask to be read in an equally linear fashion, as though the eye were a cursor scrubbing through a video of scintillating, amorphous colour fields.
Lastly, the smaller cylindrical works could be read as individual, cast-off nodes, discrete from the larger archipelagos but likewise continuing their poetics of scale and distance. Isolated as they are, they exhibit an even greater sense of fragility, jewel-like oases in a desert of wall-white.
As the title of the exhibition suggests, all three series explore the idea of absence and emptiness, as a result of the way the works push the blinding white expanse of the traditional gallery wall to the forefront of the viewer’s attention. As in many areas of life, a space that appears barren or empty can teem with detail, nuance and interconnectedness on a closer, more measured inspection.
