The new home for Fox Jensen Sydney represents a major commitment to its artists and the city of Sydney – as well as the home base that Andrew Jensen and Emma Fox have made here for almost 15 years.
Since expanding from New Zealand in 2011 the gallery has had three Paddington galleries and one outlier on the industrial fringes of Alexandria. This new location on the corner of McEvoy and Brennan Streets is situated in what is fast becoming the new gallery hub, an area that is increasingly a blend of residential and creative commercial enterprises.
Fox Jensen has long set itself aside in terms of its international program, bringing substantially more artists and their work to Australia than any other gallery in Australasia. The beautifully detailed new space offers their artists the scope to be ambitious and the gallery the chance to deal with the logistics of major projects.
Blessed with glorious natural light and soaring ceilings, the gallery has a scale that is increasingly uncommon. As a foil to the grand front space there is a beautifully hushed second gallery whose proportions and atmosphere offer a contrasting opportunity to see works. Whether it is combined with the front gallery to make larger exhibitions or kept aside, Andrew Jensen compares it to the Günter Umberg’s famous Cologne space and program called Raum Für Malerie, where a single painting or sculpture was presented.
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The opening exhibition ‘Plastic Soul’ brings museum scaled works by Imi Knoebel, Hanns Kunitzberger, Mark Francis, Erin Lawlor, Todd Hunter and Koen Delaere alongside one small but compelling painting of Umberg’s. The exhibition explores the deep connections between sound and vision. As stated in the catalogue:
If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music. – Gustav Mahler
Jensen and Emma Fox’s text elaborates: “The best painting neatly evades language in very much the same way that Mahler suggested music does. There ought to be no surprise in this and yet most days I am asked, with varying levels of agitation, what does this painting mean? As if by simply talking about it, the work may suddenly give up its secrets.
It is true of course that sometimes a phrase may unlock something in the apprehension of a work but ultimately there is no substitute for consideration and looking – and being repeatedly told that you can meaningfully apprehend painting by reading more is like being told that you can learn to swim, if you’d just read the manual.”
Following Plastic Soul is a solo exhibition by the acclaimed Belgian sculptor Sofie Muller, whose neo-Romantic sculptures in alabaster are made with uncommon facility and tenderness. Muller has added painting to her practice and it is no surprise that these also demonstrate a cognizance of history and a feeling for this moment.
Concluding the year is a major exhibition of one of Australia’s great painters, Aida Tomescu. Tomescu has been painting for this exhibition for a long time and it will extend even further her expansive compositions.
