Photo: Andrew Curtis. Courtesy the artist and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne

Eugene Carchesio, "Untitled (light bulb)" (2004). Watercolor on graph paper, 113/4 x 81/4 in.

October 2008 Field Guide

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Cinema Remixed and Reloaded

Dark Continents

Cildo Meireles's Dark Materials

Rivane Neuenschwander

Franz West

Open

Lois and Franziska Weinberger

Tadao Ando's Stone Hill Center

Le Futurisme a Paris

The Tropics: Views From The Middle of The Globe

Nam June Paik Art Center

Museums in the 21st Century: Concepts, Projects, Buildings

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Self-taught Brisbane-based artist Eugene Carchesio is drawn to nature—a particularly quiet, minimal strain of it, as revealed in his careful artwork and musical compositions. Since the 1980s, his work in collage, sculpture (matchboxes are a favored material), and watercolor has depicted a pared-down geometry of things: spheres, cones, leaves, cubes, and distorted and repeated words like SILENCE or ELEPHANT carefully shaded onto graph paper. Floating in blank backgrounds, these reduced still lifes retain the purity of their simple forms, as Carchesio emphasizes light sources and shadows with a playfulness and sincerity reminiscent of origami. Along with Leighton Craig, Carchesio founded the avant-folk musical collective the Lost Domain in 1998, which makes hypnotic electronic music that is equal parts found sounds from nature, computer-generated melodies, and crooning (think Jim Morrison doing spoken word with birdsong and electric drones). Carchesio’s survey at the Queensland Art Gallery looks back at more than 20 years of the artist’s prolific output, and celebrates the fertile potential of simple shapes. On view Oct. 25–Feb. 1, qag.qld.gov.au "Eugene Carchesio" originally appeared in the October 2008 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' October 2008 Table of Contents.