On Rohan Schwartz’s series, Deep Fields (ongoing-)

The continuing body of work, ‘Deep Fields’, is part of an exploration which orbits the unreliability of our perception and associated concerns about separability and division. The works beckon viewers to interact with the dynamic, ever-changing nature of light, and in an instant, its absence thereof, where the canvas echoes between the boundless shimmer and imminent depths of darkness. Schwartz draws upon the metaphor of the ever-incomplete map, ever-evolving in specificity we humans seek, until such time as it serves us no purpose, as alluded to in Jorge Luis Borges’ short story, ‘On Exactitude in Science’ (1946)¹. Similarly, the inscriptions, ‘Et sic in infinitum’ which translate to and so on to infinity…, which features on the outskirts of all four sides of Robert Fludd’s black square, ‘Utriusque Cosmi’ (1617)² leaves us with the inference of boundlessness and all that which is ineffable.

Where the radical complexity is cultivated in Schwartz’s painted works is the dynamic and intricate taxonomy of textured, rhythmical patterns of fine dust, sand and glass, along with circular incisions, paper and fabric sheeting, built layer by layer by layer, all finally covered, perhaps encased by semi and high gloss black enamel paint. Thus, the works distort one’s sense of the visible depth perception and possible limits of seeing the canvas as pictorial, nor the planar surface in its entirety. Move forward, lose the object, the bigger picture, and gain insight into the particulars – the sand, the incisions, all that which is pulled back through from the inner side of the canvas to the foremost limits of the front of the image’s surface. Then step back, even with the most subtle movement, and one loses the fixity of the particular, all the while the flow of boundless light shifts (as like Ābhāsa [आभास] in Sanskrit, which refers to an artwork as semblance, shining back³) remakes one’s experience of the image as though becoming imageless (Nir-ābhāsa [निराभास] in Sanskrit refers to the imageless, void, the erroneous⁴). Schwartz is inviting the viewer to explicitly engage in deeper attention, longer time spent between stillness and flux, and the inescapable, contingent state of interdependence (or as he refers to it as intradependence), to recognise is one’s own self and body as dynamically a crucial part of the nature of the works in proximity and relationship. Each painting appears to amplify our registration of continuous flux, and gesture towards all of which is in plain sight but we cannot see.


^{1 Jorge Luis Borges, On Exactitude in Science, from Collected Fictions, translated by Andrew Hurley for the Penguin Random House edition, 1999; accessed online via KWARC website; and originally published in an edition of Los Anales de Buenos Aires, March 1946. 
2 Robert Fludd, Et sic in infinitum, first ed. of two volumes published by Oppenheim and Frankfort between 1617–1624; accessed online via The Public Domain Review., essay Black on Black by Eugene Thacker, April 10, 2015.
3 Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, The Transformation of Nature in Art: Theories of art in Indian, Chinese and European medievil art; iconography, ideal representation, perspective and space relations, Dover Publications, New York, 1956, p.141.
4 Ibid, p.144.} 

Oscilloforms, curated group exhibition at p r o j e c t 8 contemporary art space

Words by Cūrā8 (Kim Donaldson and Sean Lowry)

‘In the not-too-distant past, the radical diversity that now characterises art was perhaps more likely understood in relation to one of the historically romanticised twin faces of modern art. These broad allegiances can be characterised as, on the one hand a progressive tendency toward reduction and abstraction, and on the other an iconoclastic tendency toward association, quotation and juxtaposition. And for the most part, these oppositional tendencies developed through very different formal and conceptual methodologies. Today, however, we are more likely to encounter art as a series of granular and sometimes contradictory oscillations between and around these once heated debates.

Oscilloforms is a neologism encapsulating an experientially grounded inquiry into the disparate and entangled natures of reductive, expanded and non-objective art artforms in the twenty-first century. This mutant term assumes that contemporary art is understood not as a chronological shift from its historical predecessors but rather as a complex interplay of continuities, dead ends, lateral exaptations and departures. Unlike its twentieth-century precursors, this is art that actively and playfully blurs once rigid demarcations between abstraction and representation.

Curated by Cūrā8, and featuring the following artists:
Su Baker
Sadie Chandler
Yuna Chun
Richard Dunn
Craig Easton
Deven Marriner
Carol Cheng Mastroianni
Rohan Schwartz
Anne Scott Wilson
Mimi Zheng
+ Karina Utomo and Lewis Gittus 24.05.2024 (performance)

Here, an artist may instead emphasise the extent and manner to which a work refers beyond itself, defies literal interpretation, or delineates its presence in the world. This granular blurring is also symptomatic of broader departures from understanding art and the world though the antithetical play of binaries, such as hard-line conceptualism set against the reified autonomy of formalism. Indeed, rather than throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater, some artists prefer to emphasise mutual insufficiencies, such as the inevitable presence of external historical, social and cultural references in what might be otherwise read as reductive or abstracted material presentations. Although the once antithetical poles of reduction and expansion were historically seen as cornerstones in the interpretation of progressive art, such distinctions are today more aptly experienced as oscillating amalgamations of eclectic formal and conceptual aesthetic languages. Accordingly, this exhibition reflects the pluralistic and multifaceted natures of current artistic practices.


The artists presented in Oscilloforms navigate this diverse terrain, employing a broad spectrum of material and conceptual approaches. Their works are testament to myriad ways in which reductive, non-objective and materially expanded artforms can serve as dynamic vehicles for filtering diverse interests, experiences and perspectives.’