Darren Wardle makes art that lives within an uncomfortable space, often
oscillating between the extremes of beauty and ugliness. Known for his majestic
psychedelic exterior and interior architecture paintings the viewer is seduced on
the one hand and left isolated and running for the exit on the other. His paintings depict the familiar but reveal the hidden – that which we prefer not to see – all at the same time.
They ruminate on the notion of the modern architectural ruin:
physical and metaphorical. They celebrate high modernism in order to comment
on the world in which we currently live: high consumerism. They are a visual
representation of the fine line between utopia and dystopia where a slippage
from one to the other is only a matter of inches. They are real and unreal.
Since Painting as Paradox at New York’s Artists Space in 2002, Darren Wardle
has been curated into many exhibitions of new painting internationally and in
Australia.
His work has been exhibited widely in the USA, Asia, Europe,
Australia and New Zealand. International shows include Surface Tension at the
Chelsea Art Museum New York in 2004, Stay Inside at Shoshana Wayne
Gallery in LA and he was featured in the 2004 New York Armory Show by Stux
Gallery. He has also exhibited at the Auckland Art Fair 2013, Platform LA 2012,
NADA Miami 2009, Sofia Bulgaria Art Fair 2008 and the CIGE in Beijing 2008.
Wardle has recently returned to Australia after showing at the Saatchi Gallery in
London and conducting research in Berlin.
His most recent solo exhibition at La Trobe University Visual Arts Centre, Darren Wardle: Head Case, featured his confronting series of “Head Case Study” portraits in its entirety for the first time.
In 2013 Wardle won the Gold Coast Art Prize and has been a finalist in many
others, including this year’s Sir John Sulman Prize at the Art Gallery of New
South Wales. Television documentaries have been made about Wardle’s work
by the ABC, he has been awarded numerous grants by the Australia Council for
the Arts and Arts Victoria and he has been an artist in residence at international
studio programs. His shows have been reviewed and his practice written about
in art journals, magazines and newspapers around the world.
Wardle’s works are held in significant collections including the National Gallery
of Victoria, Heidi Museum of Modern Art, Latrobe University Museum Collection,
RMIT University Collection, Lyon House Museum, the National Australia Bank,
City of Banyule Collection and the Gold Coast City Gallery Collection.
Darren Wardle graduated with Honours from RMIT University in 1997, where
he is a lecturer in painting, and is completing his Masters by Research at the
Victorian College of the Arts. He is represented by Fehily Contemporary,
Melbourne, and Stephan Stoyanov Gallery, New York.
