Adelaide Review

PIT KASSEL, paintings
JAMES WARREN-SMITH, mixed media sculptures
BMG Art

It was easy to appreciate why these two artists may have been showing together.
They shared a preference for paint or surface qualities which communicated dryness
and grittiness. There was also common ground in terms of treatment of form.

Kassel's musos and dancers were articulated by broad brush block ins.
Warren Smith's sculptures, although varied in media and format, also
favoured fragmentation and disjunction. From then on it was all difference. 

With Kassel it was back to the ' 60s - sort of.
The crusty surfaces and throw down, full arm gestures expressed the expansive,
guilt free, pre-post modernist optimism of an earlier period in Australian art when
painting was more a test of gestural bravura and a public subscription to masculine
earthy values. These images are cool and easy on the eye. Hard not to like even
though some threatened to metamorphose into Rolf Harris television murals.
Best work "Native Dancers" but l'll work on "Is This Whyalla?". 

Warren Smith was upstairs and downstairs and outside as well.
And everytime another work came into view a new artist appeared. The artist may
be cutting a figure as media man, plunging boldly into different materials and
methods of forming and fabricating to demonstrate versatility perhaps or to simply,
as is sometimes described, 'explore options'. Karma-bandhana had presence and a
satisfying resolution of materials and forms absent in other works notably
The Mediator which just looked plain confused about its appearance.
JN

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