With this exhibition we see a glorious riot of colour in stark contrast to his last show of shimmering black works presented as New Zealand first went into lockdown almost two years ago.

Hemer’s title Skyscapes and Portals suggests the material and conceptual ambit of his project. Skyscapes point to painting’s landscape traditions but these skyscapes, with their starting point as outdoor scans of the sky - whether presented through painting or digitally native formats - speak to our contemporary viewing and experience of the world via online platforms.

Portals may be seen as gateways to alternative worlds or paradigms. From the beginning Hemer’s work has explored the intersection of the digital and painting but this no longer is his primary concern. Rather he is seeking to blur such distinctions and to embody a new paradigmatic experience of the world that shifts seamlessly between material and dematerialized form.  The result is a sensuous representation of contemporary experience, which, like all art, speaks to its moment of making. Ironically also, these complex, deeply-layered, luscious works seductively call to be experienced directly and viscerally, and in that experience show up the absence of the sensory and the second-handedness of much of the online experience.

Hemer, who has lived and worked in Vienna for several years, is represented by galleries in London, New York, Los Angeles, Singapore and Sydney as well as New Zealand. He has worked full time as an artist since completing his Master of Fine Arts at the University of Canterbury in 2006. In early 2015 he completed a PhD in Fine Arts at the University of Sydney. The first survey of his work, André Hemer: 2005 – 2015 was held at the Pātaka Art + Museum in 2015. In 2016 he won two significant New Zealand awards, the Paramount Award in the Wallace Art Awards and an Arts Foundation New Generation Award. He was also recently nominated for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize which is most established arts prize in the Asia-Pacific region.