JT_HistoryOfIdeasVI.png

[1/60]

Description:
JOHN TESCHENDORFF

History of Ideas VI  2010 - 2012
New Paintings and Drawings
Tales of Life & Death: Drawings 1990-1992

GALERIE DÜSSELDORF
15 July - 12 August 2012


JOHN TESCHENDORFF : 
HISTORY OF IDEAS SERIES VI (2010-2012)

The ideas explored during the past decade by
the History of Ideas project have been largely
informed by increasingly fundamentalist
political & religious tensions that exist between
east & west.  The simple pictorial devices
employed continue to be allusive rather than
illustrative, with the concealing abstracted
surfaces exploiting the dense materiality of
layered paint & wax.  Series VI (2010-2012)
continues this investigation of conservative
Australian attitudes, particularly to the nomad,
to the perils of border crossing and to an
emerging national imperative.  The most recent
Dark Sanctuary paintings begin an interrogation
of the writings of Phillip Dormer Stanhope
Fourth Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773).  This
noted English statesman & orator, in describing
the political triumph of mediocre men over
those of intelligence and goodwill, coined an
aphorism well able to describe much publicly
acknowledged achievement in our troubled
times...’Cunning is the dark sanctuary of
incapacity’