FEBRUARY – MAY 2015
NEW ZEALAND
ASIA NEW ZEALAND FOUNDATION GRANTEE
Internationally renowned artist Rohan Wealleans from New Zealand, was this years recipient of the Asia New Zealand Foundation grant allowing him to do the Surface Arts at Rumpueng Residency Program for three months.
Wealleans is represented by numerous galleries and has previously worked and exhibited with Sara Lucas in London. Rohan Wealleans was born 1977 in Invercargill, New Zealand. In 2000 he graduated with a BFA (Painting) Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland and in 2003 he gained a MFA(Painting). In the same year he won the Waikato Art Prize. In 2006 he was the winner of the 15th Annual Wallace Art Award.
As an artist, he takes on different personas to create works. Weallean’s signature paintings see layers paint on fiberglass and polystyrene. He cuts back into these architectonic layers. Segments are sliced from one painting and added to another surface, such as sculptures or live models, in a joyful accretion of colour and texture. His paintings can amass up to 80 layers of paint, resulting in a psychedelic, embarrassingly tactile, visceral and at times repulsive surface. The titles of his works combine a love of science fiction and B-grade cinema with a metonymic sense of humour.
His exhibition HOLE FILLER 5000 at Pongnoi Community Art Space, presented brand new works produced during his three months in Chiang Mai.
The exhibition brought together themes of alien woman, language, holes, painting, dream catchers and hippie commerce. The work endeavoured to create new cultures and worlds. Wealleans acted as half alien and half hippie, drawing a fine line between painting and sculpture, incorporating both “cultures” to make new hybrids.
http://hamishmckay.co.nz/artists/Rohan_Wealleans