DAVID HOCKNEY at the ROM (100 Queen’s Park) to January 1. $24, stu/srs $21 half-price Fridays 4:30-8:30 pm free Wednesdays 3:30-5:30 pm. 416-586-8000. See listing. Rating: NNNNN
British artist David Hockney has always been fascinated with new media. He was one of the first painters to use photocopiers and a fax machine as extensions of the drawing and printing process, and his Polaroid composites applied cubism to photography in a wholly innovative way.
Hockney has been experimenting with drawing apps on the iPhone and iPad since 2008, with some stunning results. He began with colour sketches of bouquets of flowers, executed with his thumb in the morning and then emailed to his close friends as little tokens or gifts. He then discovered the brush app, applied it to the iPad and has been using the device as a sketch pad ever since.
For this show, presented by the ROM’s Institute for Contemporary Culture, 20 iPhones and 25 iPads display slide shows of still lifes, portraits and landscapes. On devices mounted on the walls and framed by small lines or grids, the images pop off the wall like paintings. Hockney, who sketches every day, promises to send new images as they are completed until the show’s end.
The works are unmistakable Hockneys, with his signature bold colours and a sense of line and shape as playful as it is refined.
The exhibit includes several animations of iPad landscapes and portraits being created from start to finish. The blank screen is first blurred by a few tentative strokes and outlines, then covered in layer after layer of deft lines, fields of colour and, finally, points of emphasis.
Hockney’s aesthetic has always been one of bold playfulness coupled with serene detachment. His is a happy world of sunrises, flower bouquets, lovely gardens, sitting rooms and inviting piles of books. Ultimately, however, he is painting light, and it is his agile eye and engaged spirit that brings these domestic scenes to such refreshing life.
art@nowtoronto.com
