Art seen: The fine line between fact and fiction

James Dignan takes a look at latest exhibitions around Dunedin.

"Utopia", Cao Fei (Dunedin Public Art Gallery)

Cao Fei is a Chinese artist working in the media of digital video and still photography.

In her exhibition "Utopia", reality and computer avatar combine and overlap in a series of works in both media.

The photographs show scenes from urban China where the line between fact and fiction has disappeared and superheroes interact with locals.

This theme is continued in the video, Cosplayer.

Further videos present scenes from the world of China Tracy, Cao Fei's alter ego in the web-based (un)reality, Second Life.

The works question where reality ends and fantasy begins - a question which has become more immediate with the development of computer-based immersion role-play.

The question is specifically poignant for China, a country which has undergone astonishingly rapid economic and cultural change in recent years.

The highlight of the show is RMB City, a flypast of a fantastic digital urban island replete with impossible architecture.

The city is both homage and parody, with many Chinese symbols and landmarks (such as Beijing's Olympic Stadium and Tiananmen Square) collaged into the land.

The Utopia depicted is gently humorous, and its view of China is both touching and telling.

The city's name, RMB, hints at these two facets - it stands for both "remember" and for the Chinese national currency, renminbi.

"The Lost Path", Karl Maughan (Milford Gallery)

In "The Lost Path", Karl Maughan continues his theme of large, strong studies of formal gardens.

His works, in oil on linen, present garden vistas which are simultaneously wildly natural and formally regimented by human hands.

Maughan's painting style reflects this duality.

The works are precise yet fluid in their almost calligraphic brushwork.

There is a flow to the paint that is deceptive; from a distance, every plant is in crisp focus, yet on closer inspection the freedom with which the artist has attacked the canvas comes into sharp relief.

Though not impasto, the paint has been applied liberally, and the photographic precision with which the artist's early work was imbued has been modified with a lively impressionistic sensibility.

The works exhibit a further layer to this wild/tamed duality.

Shadow has become an increasingly important element in Maughan's paintings, and in many of the works there is a feeling of walking through deep undiscovered shade to reach the lit paths beyond.

The idea of pathways leading through the gardens is important to the works, as the exhibition's title implies, and the viewer is immersed in the depths of the works, as if travelling further along the pathways which disappear into them.

"Re-Fibra" (Blue Oyster Gallery)

Textile art takes a variety of forms, and many of these are explored in "Re-Fibra" at the Blue Oyster.

The second part of a co-operative exhibition with artists in Sweden, the display includes work by eight local and Swedish artists ranging in medium from video art to installation.

Embroidery is a popular medium in the display.

Malena Karlsson mixes stitching and digital photographs to create abstract surfaces which catch and reflect the light.

Victoria Andersson reflects on internal conflict with her simple but effective works based on illustrations from a book on jiujitsu, whereas Ngahina Hohaia draws on Maori and religious themes in an embroidered blanket resplendent with symbolism from the Taranaki land struggle.

Crochet is used by two of the artists.

Jacquelyn Greenbank incorporates found objects in her crochet sculpture of a ship adrift under pendulous skies.

Anna Eckert's crystal-like DNA wall hanging and video speak of memory and heredity, the symbolic playing out of the thread of life from one generation to the next.

Installations by Jeanette Schäring, Andrea Chandler and Genevieve Packer complete the exhibition.

Of these, Chandler's stark meditation on the cost in lives of military aggression is both the simplest and most effective.