Ivan Morley
Tehachepi
2006
Oil and cotton over aluminum panel
238.8 x 116.8 cm |
Ivan Morley’s Tehachepi takes its title from the name of a small town near Fresno California, in which a ranch was recently purchased to be the site of a Norbertine convent; a true contemporary story, which in Morley’s hands harks back to the days of untamed savage territories yet to be conquest. Rendered over the lustrous sheen of aluminium sheeting, Morley’s abstract pattern is made from cloth and oil paint. Rendered with comic detail, each round form is given anthropomorphic effect. Idiosyncratic and naïve, his TexMex coloured swatches flock in huddled congregation, each an intrinsic, yet individual value of the whole. |