Melbourne artist Deams opened his latest solo exhibition “Passing Through” at St Heliers Street Gallery. Deams was featured in our recent “A Major Minority” exhibition and we are excited to see this new exhibition that features a larger body of work. There is an excellent show statement written below that goes into depth about the artists work.

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Photo Credit David Russel

PASSING THROUGH is the latest exhibition from Melbourne street and studio painter DEAMS.

“The first impression is one of seething movement, suspended momentarily in the palpable, containing gravity of each canvas. Storms of texture collide and coalesce. Fields of occluding darkness acquiesce to explosions of positive form. A fragile linear geometry dances through the chaos, tracing the contours of profound inner experience. All this, permeated by a disarming sense of consistency: the quiet confidence of a mind that has inquired deeply into the elemental relationship between person and place, and returned to embody in painted motion the states unveiled in that vast territory.

Each canvas is both a promise and permission, inviting the witness to step through to a direct experience of sacred fearlessness. The volatile relationship between self and place is laid bare, not for analytical scrutiny, but to be viscerally embodied by the observer and experienced as a shared state of human alchemy.

The forces at play in PASSING THROUGH are further illuminated in the context of DEAMS’ previous exhibition, SWOOP & MELODIE; an attempt to respond to a dynamic worldview with a rigorous geometric structure. Where this geometry has continued in his current work, its role has shifted from the aesthetic, and taken instead the place of the individual mind, navigating the ocean of subjective experience. The exploration of the natural world has grown from a precise symphony to a contained explosion – moving beyond the imposition of conceptual thought.

This is what makes PASSING THROUGH such an extraordinary experience – because rather than paintings about a state, these paintings are the state itself. They contain, just for a moment, the torrential energy of the personal wilderness in a form capable of bypassing self-conscious intellect and transmitting the experience of an undeniable awe. ” Text by Adam Paquette

The show will conclude with a live painting and artist talk on the 30th of April, at St Helier’s Street Gallery in Melbourne.

St Heliers Street Gallery
Abbotsford Convent
1 St Heliers Street
Collingwood VIC
+61 (03) 9415 8022
facebook.com/StHeliersStreet

Exhibition Closing Party
Wednesday April 30
5 – 9pm