Previous Exhibitions

March 2017 - Lorraine Rastorfer - selected paintings

March 2017 - Lorraine Rastorfer - selected paintings

For the month of March 2017, ZIMMERMAN is featuring the works of Wellington based artist, Lorraine Rastorfer

Comprising a selection of paintings from the artist’s recent solo exhibition at Pataka Art + Museum, this is the artist’s first exhibition at ZIMMERMAN.  

 

Rastorfer’s large abstract paintings are evocative of golden flax strands and silver ribbons, as if twisting, turning and floating in the breeze.

 

Iridescent lines of colour curl and intertwine across deep monochromatic surfaces, each painting possessing “its own pace and rhythm, with some containing a frenetic sense of energy and movement and others unfurling slowly and leisurely.”(1)  

 

Each painterly comb and flourish across the surface contributes to the pattern, depth and balance of the completed work.

 

“Rastorfer looks for the dynamics within the paint medium, investigating the same process over and over again with small graduated differences exploring the permutations of possibility and chance ... For her each painting is the emergent variation of the one that preceded it. The same tools and techniques are applied to each work. What differs is the colour and the gesture, the way the paint responds, the tonal variations, the texture.”(2)

 

“I work with the fluidity, viscosity, opacity and transparency of paint, a variety of mark-making tools that I have designed myself and the effects of chance, control and an overall conceptual intent. I keep going until I find a spatial balance; a sense of ordered freedom, a unified variety of rhythms and streams.”  - Lorraine Rastorfer

  

References:
(1) Review by Laura Elliott - published in Art Seen, Otago Daily Times, November 2015
(2) Essay by Jacquie Clarke - published in connection with Rastorfer’s Meshworks exhibition at The New Dowse, December 2007 to March 2008

 

Artist's bio

 

Born in Wellington in 1961, Lorraine Rastorfer holds a Master of Fine Arts (First Class Honours) from Auckland University, Elam School of Fine Arts (1992). 

 

Rastorfer is a regular exhibitor, with recent solo exhibitions at Pataka Art + Museum (2015 and 2016), and five solo exhibitions at Milford Galleries in Dunedin between 2006 and 2015.

 

A runner up in the Wallace Art Awards 1993, and a finalist in each year from 1999-2002, 2004 and 2011-2012, Rastorfer has received a number of other awards and grants. These include the 2005 CoCA/Anthony Harper Contemporary Art Award, 1993 Ida Eise Painting Award and 2002 WSA NZ Painting and Printmaking Award.

 

More recently, the artist’s work was selected as a finalist for the NZ Painting and Printmaking Award in 2008, 2011 and 2017.

 

Work by Rastorfer has also been selected for the Parkin Drawing Prize each year from 2014 to 2016, and in 2014 and 2015 for the Art Waikato National Contemporary Art Award. 

 

The artist’s work is represented in notable private and corporate collections, including the collections of Chapman Tripp Sheffield Young, ANZ National Bank, Auckland Institute of Architects and the James Wallace Arts Trust.