EXHIBITION: COLD BLOOD
From the casualties of supercool clubbing scenes to the haunted outcasts of humanity, local artist Anthony Bartok sure knows an interesting subject when he sees one. His 2008 exhibition, Kids Now, was a snapshot of barely legal scenesters, captured in tooth-aching, candy brights. His next, Cold Blood, goes down a different and more disturbed path, into the world of serial killers, rapists and cannibals. And yet the effect seems eerily similar – an off-kilter, off-taste look at faces, flattened into almost-abstract symbols devoid of detail. You can see traces of British painter Francis Bacon and Australian sensualist Brett Whiteley; a homage Bartok acknowledges. “I’m drawn to the faces that usually belie their crimes. It is that contrast of innocence and evil that I like playing with. When faced with a photograph of Albert Fish, you see an old, feeble man who you’d imagine to be as innocuous as any grandpa.” Then you read about his crimes, which include duplicity, cruel showmanship and a – literal – taste for little girls. “You look at his photograph again and feel the waves of horror busting out of the tones. That’s what I want to capture in the works.” Bartok stresses there is no level of empathy in the exchange, not that you could ever imagine it. Just a series of skilfully executed portraits fuelled with, “a dark and deep horror that entangles the viewer.”
Nov 26-Dec 2, Blank Space Gallery, 374 Crown St Surry Hills, anthonybartok.com
