Above: Power Bottom (Constellation Pavo), 2024, 24 x 18“ right: Avoiding Ordinary Boys (Constellation Pavo), 2024, 12 x 16“, glitter, Pacific pearls, Japanese fresh water pearls, acrylic, jewelry wire & mixed media on board.
Reuben Paterson, In The Stars I Trust
Gow Langsford at Jutta Gallery 7 - 20 October 2024
Monday - Saturday: 10am - 6pm, Sunday: 11am - 5pm
The Hubble Space Telescope launched from Merritt Island, Florida nearly thirty-five years ago. It has, after lengthy corrections on a flawed optical system, beamed down accurate images of the universe, filling holes that have riddled the field of astrophysics for generations. Reuben Paterson (b. 1973) takes these supposed answers as reasons to delve more deeply into the imagination. The ten mixed-media paintings that compose In The Stars I Trust feature constellations, mapped and scaled to correspond with the placement of star patterns captured by HST. We see these formations from the vantage of the Southern Hemisphere, where Paterson was born in Auckland, New Zealand to parents of Māori and Scottish descent. His acrylics of night skies are punctuated by pearls the artist sourced from the Pacific. Such sea-born gems, according to one story told by First Nations people throughout Oceania, are tears that the stars produced when they peered into the darkness of the oceans, to shed a bit of light on an unsympathetic planet. Paterson’s conceptually rich practice searches for light. He’s known in his birth country, where he’s one of the most lauded artists on the contemporary scene, for his bountiful, unusual use of glitter, a material that shines, sometimes annoyingly so, and generously spreads everywhere—maybe a bit too generously. Glitter is a complicated and labor-intensive substance to incorporate in one’s studio; it’s also campy, ostentatious, industrial, often American-made and overwhelmingly queer-coded. Paterson’s vast, tactile visions of nature can evoke the austere oils of Vija Celmins, yet his sparkly confetti is a flamboyant departure. This art lets itself be gay.
Paterson bejewels a grayscale galaxy, spangles it in his sexuality and takes Māori philosophy as his own, teasing tales from his cultural heritage and threading them through a queer present. Like the stars with their pearls, he uses glitter to illuminate a gloomy world. Figuration appears irreverent in his cosmos partially because of his images’ air of gentleness and goodwill. He redefines the tiger’s role at the top of the food chain with his depiction of a bedroom-eyed beast, its paws seemingly submissive, in “Power Bottom (Constellation Pavo).” The treasure chest in “Happy Being No-one But Themselves (Constellation Orion)” suggests that the ultimate prize isn’t wealth, but truth to one’s own desires and beliefs. His rejection of avarice, in a region ravaged by maritime greed, mirrors his pictures’ refusal to obey the edicts of “refined taste.” Both are values that so much of the world has been compelled to inherit from imperial superpowers.
Beneath the playfulness of Paterson’s work—or, perhaps, hundreds of miles above it—floats a sense of unease that feels weightier when one knows that the artist uprooted from New Zealand and moved to Lower Manhattan in 2023. Hubble is a predominantly American invention, and Paterson’s use of its cartography indicates a persistence of colonialism, less visible if perhaps more all-seeing and global than ever. He is forced to view his home, his traditions and his very nighttime through a U.S.-made lens. The notion of homosexuality in its modern form, with its campy touchstones and focus on identity, is a Western export that indigenous people can only map onto their own experiences by way of a careful, conscious balance. Paterson is heir to an intricate notion of self, but he never walks a tightrope. His art prances, peacocks, struts its stuff, and with a heart as open as the Southern Sky, invites us inside.
–Daniel Felsenthel
Daniel Felsenthel is an essayist, critic, fiction writer and poet whose nonfiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Nation, The New Republic, Pitchfork, the Village Voice and Frieze, among many other publications.
Reuben Paterson:
https://www.reubenpaterson.com/
The world-bending art of Reuben Paterson (b. 1973, Auckland, New Zealand: Ngāti Rangitihi, Ngāi Tūhoe, Tūhourangi, Scottish) reaches back to his childhood experiences of the glistening waters and sparkling black sands of Tamaki Makarau's West Coast. His signature use of glitter carries all these memories and the people, presences, and histories to which they connect. Always pushing what he describes as the 'limitless' material and conceptual possibilities of glitter, Paterson's paintings, sculptures, animations, and installations share an optical energy that harnesses the mesmerizing effects of pattern, colour, and texture.
Paterson uses the transformative properties of light to reach beyond appearances and pry open the complex histories and tensions that sit just beneath the surface of all things. His art is made in celebration of exchange and encounter, hybridity and fluidity, spirituality and sexuality, and is especially attuned to the dynamics of queer identity and whakapapa (genealogy)-based modes of cultural knowledge.
Based in New York, Reuben Paterson has exhibited nationally and internationally since 2000. He has staged recent solo exhibitions at City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi (2023), Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū (2022) and The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt (2020), and has featured in significant group exhibitions such as the largest survey of contemporary Māori art, Toi Tū Toi Ora: Contemporary Māori Art at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki (2020); Contemporary Asian and Pacific Art, The National Gallery of Victoria, Australia (2016); and E Tu Ake, the Musee du quai Branly, Paris, France; the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, New Zealand; Museo Nacional las Culturas, Mexico City, Mexico; and Musee de la Civilisation, Quebec City, Canada (2011-13). Paterson has participated in major international art fairs and biennales, including Takiwā Hou: Imagining New Spaces as part of the programme Decolonising Malta: Polyphony Is Us, Malta Biennale (2024); The Beauty of Distance: Songs of survival in a precarious age, 17th Biennial of Sydney, Sydney, Australia (2010); Asia Pacific Triennial, Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia (2009); nEUclear Reactions, Prague Biennial, Czech Republic (2010); and the 9th Pacific Biennial, Republic of Palau (2001). Paterson’s recent public art commissions include Guide Kaiārahi at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki (2021-26); Te Maiea, Aotea Square, Auckland (2021); and The Golden Bearing, Puketerata Garden of National Significance, Taranaki, New Zealand (2016). His works are housed in major public and private collections across Australasia. Paterson’s commitment to reaching outside of the art world and connecting art, industry, fashion and politics has led to long term collaborations with WORLD Fashion house and Dilana Rugs.
Aaron Lister, 2023. Senior Curator (Toi) at City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi in Aotearoa New Zealand.
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