BRETT EAST & REBECCA PEARSON

There is a deceptive simplicity at play in the work of Sydney artist Rebecca Pearson. Small, votive-like boxes contain what at first glance appear to be pastoral, cloying scenes trading in cliché and familiarity. A man reclines on a chaise, a mother poses with infant and child, an explorer rests atop a peak, a man in a cap holds aloft a giant fish. But beneath the crudely painted Perspex whole worlds open up. Anomalous lenticular cards (a 3D style of printing that changes the image as you move in front of it) sport scenes of waterfalls, butterflies, sheep in fields. Tin, foil, feathers, postcard vistas all intersect in shifting planes of otherness and elsewhere. The beauty is in the detail, and the longer you look the more a nuanced, multi-layered narrative comes to life.

Brett East, whose art is held in collections at the AGNSW and the National Art School, similarly operates at a micro-level of detail. His Painting Sequence features c-type close-up prints of paint dollops, while the large-scale photoreal painting Seeking to gain access to an immaterial reality beyond the limits of human vision (2011) transforms the same subject matter into an operatic writhe of technical mastery and moments of infinitesimal beauty.

Until Aug 6, Gallery 9, 9 Darley St, Darlinghurst, gallery9.com.au