Harnessing imitative techniques honed during a childhood spent voraciously copying old master paintings, Gian Manik recasts and filtrates Caravaggio’s second version of Supper at Emmaus (1606). By speculating upon the futures and legacies of reproduced artworks, the exhibition demonstrates a research-led practice responding to the ontology of “institutional painting,” that has been canonised in western art history.
Gian Manik’s approach to painting is informed by an irreverence for genre and resistance to stylistic categorisation. Driven by a compulsion to paint, Manik’s artworks move dexterously between the polarities of figuration and abstraction. Within Manik’s layered surfaces, references from the fabric of his daily life and familial history converge with gestural passages to form a chaotic palimpsest of representation and memory. Nostalgic, melancholic and facetious, Manik’s paintings vibrate with emotional and compositional intensity.
Gian Manik is represented by Sutton Gallery, Naarm Melbourne.
Gertrude Glasshouse is generously supported by Michael Schwarz and David Clouston.
The 2024 Gertrude Glasshouse Program is supported by the City of Yarra.
12 April – 11 May 2024
Opening | Thursday 11 April, 6 – 8pm
Gertrude Glasshouse
44 Glasshouse Road, Collingwood, Wurundjeri Country
