The Art Journal
A Painting from the East - or is it? A Case of Pareidolia
A Painting from the East 1, 2100 x 1170mm Signed Limited Edition of 5. I love discovering new works, trying to make sense of them and how they speak to me as I create and name them. In the process, I try constantly to find ways of describing the thinking behind my creative work concisely. I recently finished reading Reductionism in Art and Brain Science – Bridging the Two Cultures by the 2000 Nobel Prize Winner in Physiology or Medicine, Eric Kandel. The book is a superb short easy read on the emergence of abstract art in the 20th century and its connection with the field of psychology, a relatively recent scientific development. Kandel writes“…The brain specializes in extracting meaningful patterns from the input it receives, even when that input is extremely noisy. This psychological phenomenon is referred to as pareidolia, in which a vague, random stimulus is perceived as significant.”This is not a recent observation. In 15th Century, Leonardo Da Vinci wrote of this capability in his notebooks::…If you look at any walls spotted with various stains or with a mixture of different kinds of stones, if you are about to invent some scene you will be able to see in it a resemblance to various different landscapes adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys, and various groups of hills. You will also be able to see diverse combats and figures in quick movement, and strange expressions of faces, and outlandish costumes, and an infinite number of things which you can then reduce into separate and well-conceived forms….”Kandel's writing has given me a way of explaining my creative process and why it evokes such a hugely diverse range of perceptions from my viewers. Perception creates pareidolia in the viewer by asking the profound question: “How do you impose order on randomness?" First Offer: Exclusive Pre-Market Release for Art Journal Subscribers Only of A Painting From the East.Email for Price and Transport Details
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The Enter Art Foundation’s “42 Contemporary Artists” Exhibition, Berlin Art Week 2018
A selection of shots from the Enter Art Foundation exhibition “42 Contemporary Artists”, a vital part of the Berlin Art Week. The Enter Art Foundation is a unique Berlin based not for profit visual art organisation founded with the express purpose of curating exhibitions designed to introduce the work of emerging artists to European audiences. As Gunter Sachs said “ even with technology, emerging artists are still the hardest to find and are almost invisible to the public”. Head Curator, Dr Suzy Royal’s role is to select between 30 to 40 artists from the hundreds of submissions she receives and to curate those works into a reflection of the Enter Art Foundation manifesto. The works of the selected artists are actively promoted by EAF in a series of exhibitions that so far in 2018 have included Stockholm Art Week and Bonn. I am honoured to have been selected as one of the emerging artists and to have had my artwork featured in the marketing promotion for the exhibition and the Berlin Art Week 2018, a whole of city celebration.
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An Industrial Art Commission - The Challenge for the Cartography of Flow - Red
One of the real joys of my work is co-creating with clients. Khalil Najjar is Managing Director and Owner of Optim Logistics, Australia’s largest film equipment and concert entertainment freight forwarder. A move into a new head office sparked Khalil’s creative juices that saw a full scale shipping container being converted into the main meeting room and boardroom. Khalil needed some art to complement his logo design based around the Japanese concept of “enso”, a circle that is hand-drawn in one or two uninhibited brushstrokes to express a moment when the mind is free to let the body create. A chance trip into the Intercontinental Hotel Gallery, Sydney resulted in Khalil spending time viewing my database of images before settling on the Cartography of Flow – Red as the image he felt best complemented his logo. “Now I challenge you, Ralph. Can you turn that artwork into 4.2 metre triptych?”. View the film to see the surprising result!!
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Ralph Kerle's Art Goes To Berlin, September 2018
Delighted to receive this letter from the Enter Art Foundation, Berlin, Germany. "Dear Artist,I am happy to announce you have been chosen to participate in our ninth pop-up exhibition, ‘30 Contemporary Artists’ to be held Friday 14.09 - Sunday 30.09.2018 in Berlin. This fall Enter Art Foundation will present 30 German and international artists in the Gerichtshöfe building in Wedding, Berlin (Gerichtstraße 12-13, Wedding 13347). The early twentieth century factory building is now home to over 70 artist’s studios. The space we will be exhibiting in is large with high ceilings and lots of natural light, as well as track lighting. It is less 10 minutes walking distance from Ubahn and Sbahn lines which means easy access for an interesting mix of art lovers, collectors and gallerists. The last week is also the Berlin Art Week, bringing even more art interested people to Berlin. The exhibition will be open for public from Sat 15.09. - Sun 30.09, Thursdays to Sundays, 12-20:00. On Friday, 14.09. will be our private preview (19-23). Saturday, 15. September will be our public vernissage, beginning at 15:00. Saturday, 22. september will be our public Matinée including Royal talks. Sunday, 30. September will be our Finissage, from 15-18. Please confirm your participation.Yours faithfullySuzanne Royal - Head CuratorTill Wald - Managing Director and Co-Founder."If you are in Berlin in the last two weeks of September please come and see me!!
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On Top of the World
Burnt Out 1 now greets members as they enter the Intercontinental Hotel Sydney's exclusive 32nd floor Executive Club Lounge - rated the No 1 Executive Club Lounge globally because of its unique position directly above the Opera House, almost on top of the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge with panoramic views across to Sydney Heads and out to sea. 4 additional pieces of mine are to be added so the Intercontinental Sydney Executive Club Lounge will now feature my works exclusively. Honoured to have my artwork selected for such a prestigious location
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Perception and Its Visual Trickery
Burnt Out 1 - Limited Edition 1/5 Sailors Bay Middle Harbour, Sydney. 19th Jan 2018. 6.44am The genesis for my work grew out of my observations of nature and the discovery nature has a unique ability to create perfectly constructed abstract artworks. I make this assumption about nature and art because - as behaviourial psychologist Nick Chuter observes in his new book, the Mind is Flat - the brain essentially just makes everything up as it goes along – including what we fondly think of as our real perceptions of the world, which are nothing more than a patchwork of reconstructions and guesses. As an artist, this theory explains how I see the work I am creating – guesswork abstracts!! This idea of the brain playing games of neural guesswork regularly surfaces during conversations about my work. At first glance, the work seems to spark the imagination or touch an emotion in the viewer that asks the brain for a meaningful response. Whilst the response provides momentary meaning, in reality, often there is no connection between the meaning and the reality of the content of the image. Two stories from viewers whose perception of Burnt Out 1 were completely different demonstrate this idea Recently former US President Barack Obama was staying at the Sydney Intercontinental Hotel, the venue for my current pop up gallery. A young Pakistani security agent was placed outside my gallery overnight. When I arrived to open the Gallery in the morning, he walked over, introduced himself and asked if he could share something with me. Burnt Out 1 had occupied him during his 12-hour shift and he wanted to explain to me what he had discovered about the work. “It was” he said excitedly “beautiful and engaging. I have focused on it all night. I finally have discovered what it is. It is a painting from inside a cave and the light in the centre is the sun streaming in beckoning the person inside the cave into the light.” He wanted me to know this piece of art had affected him profoundly in such a positive way and asked whether I would pose for a photo standing in front of the artwork for him to send to his family in Lahore. Even though I knew what the image was in reality, whilst having my own view on what it might or could represent to a viewer, at no time had I even sensed in the image a cave. My new Pakistani friend had offered an entirely new perception of what the image represented. That I might have created a visual image that evoked Plato’s “the Cave” - my favourite Ancient Greek allegory - was powerful. Why hadn't my brain revealed that possibility? Two weeks later, an energetic loquacious gentleman, 70 years young and a World War 2 displaced person of Latvian descent, rushed into the Gallery insisting he had to buy Burnt Out 1 - now. He had walked past the Gallery several times over the last two days and Burnt Out 1 had made a very important connection for him. He and his family had been in the heart of the path of the Ash Wednesday bushfire in South Australia in 1983, still one of Australia’s most devastating bushfires with the loss of 75 lives and over 3000 buildings destroyed. Burnt Out 1 offered his neural pathway a sense of recall and yet peaceful meditation on a most horrific moment in his life. So what is the photo of in reality that has provoked these wonderful stories? I am conflicted about answering that question. Should I describe in detail how the imagine was constructed and take away its inherent abstraction, its mysticism. Or should I describe it in detail and let viewers examine their own reactions to the description. For the moment, I am holding back. Let your brain do the guesswork. Whatever it comes up with will be correct!!
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Andy Singh's speech at my Nature in Surrealism Exhibition Opening
I asked Andy Singh, President of the NSW River Canoe Club, the oldest kayak club in NSW to say a few words at the opening of my new exhibition, "Nature in Surrealism" at the Intercontinental Hotel Gallery, Sydney. The audience response to his short speech was so powerful and positive I asked Andy if I might share it in full. Here it is ... Imagine an icy drop of spring melt falling into the headwater creeks of the Kosciusko. Trickles join together to become Friday’s Flat Creek, then the Thredbo river cascading down the river valley before forming the dams of the Snowy scheme. A long rest behind the dam wall before tumbling over the slipway as the Snowy river runs its long, winding journey to the sea. Gravity gives way to currents and tides, drawing out and down to the deeper offshore water where the eastern Australian current turns southward, down the Victorian coast and eventually finding refuge in Bass Strait. Here whirlpools of currents cycle round and round until a slingshot swings around the west Tasmanian coast and flings our well-travelled droplets towards the frigid southern oceans. We learn from an early age to be bound politically and emotionally to the land, to the brown mass on the globe. Somehow we ignore those beautiful blue ribbons running through, over and around our continents, somehow we ignore this dynamic mass of energy connecting us all. Across this continuous connected current of water, our club’s kayakers skim the surface of creeks, rivers, harbors and oceans. We paddle in canoes, river boats, and sea kayaks. But the continuity of this water does not mean consistency – each riffle, ripple, rapid, wave, current and tide challenges us to be alert, to read its switchblade intent, to move with its power and ultimately respect its authority. We remember, always beneath our passage, an unforgiving anger resides, ready to strike at the first complacency with its deathly hand and pull us to our demise. Our safe passage across water's ever-changing surface is a ride of uncertainty. It requires the acceptance, both physically and mentally, of being part of something bigger than ourselves. We learn to be humble, to be respectful and to be tolerant of others. We learn, while we are never in command of the sea, we can still befriend its currents, its tides and its waves, we can listen to its hints of dangers and storms ahead. We can, through connection, application and resilience, make progress. We can survive. We are a club, a community. I know Ralph spends many mornings by himself on the harbor with his camera, but he is never alone. He paddles in a community, eighty three years old. He paddles in spirit with our club patron, the ninety five year old Basil, still spring enough to drive out and see Ralph on a beginners white water weekend. He paddles in spirit with five year old Amelia, sitting in the middle of her parents' canoe as they reach Gundagai on the Murrumbidgee river, a journey Ralph has also made with me. Ralph paddles in the same community as Nicole, Kevin and Rick when they cross Bass Strait and find club members waiting for them in Tasmania to take them home. Ultimately we paddle these water alone, but we find ourselves stronger, smarter and braver because we paddle in a community. Í congratulate Ralph on his work here. In his sensitive flow of texture and colour, I am on the ocean again, wind in my face, wave on my side, seeing the world in slow motion, seeing time create understanding, opportunity and hope, for a better world. Personally, I have suffered from the elements of PTSD. Within my family there is depression and anorexia. Within my workplace, there is stoic suppression, and suicide. I can’t rewind time back thirty years when depressions’ cold hand reached out and took my friend Peter, in all his youth from us. I can't turn back the clock, to give Peter the opportunity to grow a little older through the lessons we know today. I thank Ralph for his long and varied efforts in raising money and awareness for mental health, for kayaking and for our club. I thank Ralph for capturing in the brief moment of his camera lens, the vision of a better world.
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Nature in Surrealism
The Nature of Dali 3, Middle Harbour, Sydney Australia August 11 2017 9.06am As my work evolves photographing the images nature creates for me during my kayaking journeys, the more I sense the influence on my work of the 20th Century Surrealists and their concept of automatic drawing as a means of exploring our subconscious. The Belgian born artist André Masson, considered the founder of the practice of automatic drawing, proposed that by allowing the hand of the artist to flow “randomly”: across the paper, applying chance and accident to the construction of an image, this would, to a large extent, free the artist of a rational control over the image-making. More interestingly, he believed this process could be attributed to the work of the subconscious which would otherwise be repressed. During the 1920s when automatic drawing was at its peak, artists who were influenced by and practiced automatic drawing included Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Jean Arp and André Breton. It has been suggested Pablo Picasso used the automatic drawing techniques in his 1960’ series of lithographs and etchings. Masson’s method was to throw sand and glue onto a canvas, making oil paintings around the shapes that formed. This method of image making strongly reflects my own. The difference being my canvas is the still surface of the morning waters of Middle Harbour, Sydney Australia, my tools - my camera and my kayak. The angle of the sun beaming light onto the water surface forms the shapes – reflections created by nature. Just like Masson’s tossing of the sand onto the canvas, these shapes form serendipitously. Similar to the “automatic” method of the Surrealists, I shape the images by cropping or straightening them seeking to create an abstraction my subconscious can connect with aesthetically. When this connection occurs, I am able to attribute some meaning to the shape enabling me to give the work a name. Importantly though, I do not photoshop the images in any way. My images have existed in reality and I am nothing more than a facilitator of the aesthetics of nature. As my work developed around with these moments in nature, the more I was reminded of the Surrealists. If the process of automatic drawing had its roots in the subconscious as Masson posited, could it be possible the genesis for the work of the subconscious lies in nature’s reflection? This thought seems to be the basis of the thinking behind questions I often receive from viewers. Regularly I am asked if these images are paintings. What are they? What am I seeing? Like the Surrealists, I want the viewers to form their own opinions of the work. Let their subconscious speak! This article was originally printed in the Paris Edition of the Milan Interior Design Publication G&G Magazine January 2018
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Balmoral Dreaming
A short film expressing the sense of connection I experience with the natural elements around Balmoral, Sydney Australia. I am fascinated by the reflections in this particular spot. The same images occur regularly and when I enter this zone I feel as if I am sitting on top of an ancient Australian aboriginal painting.
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the Making of the Yellow Masked Mast
A short film on the making of the Yellow Masked Mast, one of the images featured in my August - September exhibition, Yellow - The Exhibition, explores how I create the work.
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Ascensions
This body of works, Ascension, awoke in me the idea of ascension into enlightenment, a path difficult and shrouded in mystery throughout civilisation. It also evokes the idea of the inner working of the brains - energy and insight combined. The images were captured on the hull of Bundeena, a 40foot ketch owned by Frank Taylor from Jarvis Bay New South Wales, Australia. The vessel was moored at the D'Albora Marina, the Spit, Middle Harbour, Sydney,. Australia. Click to take a full tour of the exhibition. Be aware it may take 60 seconds for the 3D software to load and open. Please be reassured you will have a wonderful experience though!!
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Unfinished Surface: Blue finds a wall in Paros, Greece
Paros, Greece. I am always delighted to hear from satisfied collectors. This time through Daniel Arnold a former Manly Australia resident who has now moved to the Greek Island of Paros. He sent this shot from the balcony of his new villa. Before he left Australia he bought an edition of Unfinished Surface: Blue to remind him of his life in Australia. Now the piece sits proudly staring out at this view from its position on a white wall in the villa. Unfinished Surface: Blue 1100 x 1000mm
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