darren munce

biography:

Contemporary artist Darren Munce creates works that are a compelling investigation into the visual language of painterly abstraction. Utilising a complex layering of colour and form, Munce seeks to find his own language within the vocabulary of the time-honored paint tradition. His ever-expanding practice is a place of industry, productivity, growth and decay; a source of jubilant victory and inevitable loss.

Initiated through a rigorous preparatory process, Munce’s works often respond to observed cues within his aesthetic environment; a colour from his well-tended garden, a pattern, shape or newly discovered piece of music. From this stable foundation, they careen along a path bordered on one side by technical construction and on the other, chance.

Driven by a distrust of the painterly mark, Munce executes numerous self-developed techniques to introduce accident into his process. It is here that a game begins between technical control and random result.

While his compositions evolve through a considered labour and profound attachment to process, works also demonstrate a true commitment to propagating new directions. Invention and abstraction occupy the painted space producing a vital history of additive and subtractive mark-making. Munce’s methods create a space where responses are triggered then refined and surfaces are fastidiously worked to exalt the minutiae.

The resulting works are a culmination of judicious observations and reactions each in pursuit of a finished state that strikes balance between harmony and dissonance. This theme of coalescing the discordant is a compelling characteristic of Munce’s work and drives exploration in his practice.