Lewis Ihnatko & Mark Maurangi Carrol

Nasha presents a suite of recent paintings by Mark Maurangi Carrol and Lewis Ihnatko

Lewis Ihnatko’s paintings carry a very present but open ended narrative. The works elicit muddied and mixed emotions. The subjects are at times intensley funny but also harrowing. The paintings, through their curios charm, draw you in and invite introspection and empathy for the characters. Ihnattko depict scenes of intimacy and vulnerability through the subject matter and the painterly gesture. Ihnatko’s ideosyncratic depiction of the human subjects and the fantasy-like spaces they exist in, intentionaly obscure the unexpressed concept of the works. These tense psychodramatic paintings are ultimatley influnced by the artist’s abstract fears, anxieties and the beauty Ihnatko sees in the world. 

Mark Maurangi Carrol works primarily within the field of painting. Trained as a printmaker, the works are process-based and utilise oil-based enamels and permanent marker soaked into the reverse surface of the loom-state linen supports. In his practice Carrol experiments with chance-based methodologies, cultural memory and experience through traditional methods of pāreu and tivaevae dying and staining, a process learnt through his experiences traveling to his mother’s country of birth in the Cook Islands. 

The principal themes surrounding Carrol's work are the result of his ongoing investigation into virtual space and its cultural and historical implications on the visual language of pictoral phenomena. Themes of the virtual encounter, desire, loneliness, identity, and anonymity are composed from a combination of collected images and words set within composite landscapes created from remembered places, and vast simulated acres of digital space accessed through ageing software. These sources are decontextualised and removed from their intended functionality and reassembled into disjointed fragments of semi-self-referential and familial figures within the familiar, uncanny spaces of recreated memory.