‘Final Shavasana’ is the current exhibition on at Venn Gallery, featuring new work from Western Australian artist Andrew Varano.
The solo exhibition features drawing and sculptural work, with a key new work in the exhibition being a lo-fi kinetic sculpture powered by an electric motor and pulley system that propels a number of spinning colour wheels to create a visually compelling system that challenges the viewer’s perception of colour and forms.
Varano has maintained a diverse approach to art making in his career to date and has worked across a range of media to produce artworks that often create spaces for contemplation. His previous lo-fi style kinetic sculptures utilised repetitive movements and sequences to draw the viewer into points of focus within a sculptural assemblage. Through the use of these specific aesthetic strategies and their accompanying soundscapes, the works aimed to engineer a focus, which could be equally described as both Zen-like and neurotic.
Final Shavasana builds upon these concepts to examine repetitive movement through undertaking studies of the human body in the state of exercise and structured poses. The artist suggests that gym equipment can be seen as a form of kinetic sculpture and that the repetitive movement that these dictate can provoke a kind of mild mind/body split,causing one to experience a sense of disembodiment.
Varano has received a number of awards in his career already, including the inaugural Dr Harold Schenberg Art Prize (2010), Jump Mentorship with leading artist Callum Morton (2012), Qantas Award Encouragement of Contemporary Art Award (2012)
‘Final Shavasana is at the Venn Gallery in Queen Street Perth until 22 November.
Main Image: Andrew Varano, Installation view of Weight Tree (1) 2013, Weight Tree (2) 2013 and Skeleton (2) 2013, Second Image: Andrew Varano, Final Shavasana (3) 2013
