"Para by Richard Wearn"
2003-09-23 until 2003-10-18
Physics Room
Christchurch, , NZ New Zealand (Aotearoa)

New Zealand artist Richard Wearn has been based in the United States since graduating from Elam School of Fine Art in 1993. After completing Master studies at the University of Southern California, Wearn has exhibited prolifically and successfully in the States, but his work has not often been seen in New Zealand.

Para, Wearn's project for The Physics Room this month, will be the first chance for New Zealand audiences to see the work of the expatriate Canterbury artist. Like many of his generation, Wearn has found opportunity and success in other parts of the world, most recently completing an artist residency at the Headlands Centre for the Arts in San Francisco. Settled back at home temporarily to exhibit and visit family, Wearn will spend several months in Christchurch before returning to the States to take up tenure as Assistant Professor of Foundations at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

In Para, Wearn presents his inflatable PVC modular sculptural pieces. Adopting the idiom of minimalism, and utilising the modernist myth of the artwork as "a problem resolved", Wearn forces us to reconsider the position of the art object in relation to every other object in the world. His easily transportable and re-programmable pieces also suggest the potential for artworks to re-programme our thinking and behaviour towards art, by inviting or tempting the viewer to respond.

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for New Zealand

Other Important Exhibitions in New Zealand