Marko Hrubyj-Piper

SOLO EXHIBITION

THESE DAYS WON'T LAST FOREVER

Studio Gallery is delighted to present Marko Hrubyj-Piper's solo exhibition 'These days won't last forever' at our Wandoo St, Fortitude Valley gallery.  We invite you to join us opening night for celebratory drinks and an intimate artist talk.

RSVP HERE

The warm afternoons of summer. The deep waters that twirl and circulate our cooling bodies. Relationships formed, relationships intertwined, bodies on bodies whispering stories and swallowing wine. People waiting to be observed. Waiting for Marko to see them. Waiting, with an easing patience, for time to slow and imitate their movements. Under shade, under the Australian sun, under no pressure to be real. Figments of Marko's imagination merge into memories of summers past like the water into the sand, falling from one realm into the other. Seamlessly, as if one cannot exist without the other. Lines blurred. Easily, without pace, fragments of stillness within moments of play. Marko's repetition of scenes imitate the repetition of long, unending days from December to April. He obsesses over the interchange between figures unknown, suggesting to personalities from the subtlety of their posture, their distance from one another, expressionless but pregnant with intent. All emotion held in the body on the sand and in the strokes of Marko's confident brushstrokes. Conversations once had, sunburn sure to arise. Lovers uninterrupted by company and friendships from dreamlike memories. 

Marko switches from bold strokes of colour, valiant stripes and sharp shadows, giving a depth and assertiveness to his paintings, to then a soft unspoken merging of dreams into reality, faces with whom cannot be recognised but perhaps can be identified with, and landscapes that hint at familiarity whilst simultaneously nodding to their exclusivity. A club one wishes to be a part of but it drifts softly into the horizon, ever slightly out of reach, just as the sun slips away behind the ocean. The sun, the hero of Marko's collection, whilst never portrayed directly it is the through line of all his work. His portrayal of the shadows cast by the sun booms through his paintings, they ground, deepen and set off the tone in the artworks.

Marko's paintings offer a refuge against the sun's persistent power, demonstrated by his brilliant skill to emanate its heat and in return offer his viewers a seat in the light that these artworks emit. Marko's latest collection offers far more than a front row seat into the warm days of summers once been, his masterful interpretation of figures and their place amongst others, their place amongst memories, leaves the viewer with an imagination fulled and a feeling of sunburn on their cheeks. 

Words by Bella McGoldrick