Eugene Carchesio
Eugene Carchesio's exhibitions at That gallery, at John Mills National and, most recently, at the Bellas gallery have roused increasingly enthusiastic comments in the press. Reviews have rightly pointed to the easeful charm of the works and their fresh and original re-playing of those symbols and myths which have served as fundamental pointers to inner human processes, as well as to the outward changes of matter. The artist uses such symbols freely and spontaneously in order to build up cosmoses within cosmoses in such a way that no one systematic interpretation can fully accommodate their meaning. He avoids stereotype through his committment to a rigorous honesty and ethical action, a determined simplicity of approach. Memories, signs, suggested notions are seemingly thrown playfully onto the paper, constructed loosely, or extremely densely, according to the generative feeling of the work: finally, "christened" with a title which is a fundamental part of the work, poetically, but forcefully, nailing-down the final intention without breaking through its enigma.
The works do remain enigmatic. Most "art" does not not “say it all" all at once, but the elusiveness of Eugene Carchesio's work is constructed carefully into its purpose. Nonetheless the work is accessible, especially at the purely visual level since his new experimentation with colour - a pleasure in the sensual quality of the surfaces which his philosophical approach has not erased or tried to deny. (Interviews with Nine Queensland Artists IMA Brisbane, 1986).
Although he is at the beginning of "establishing" himself in the mainstream gallery exhibition circuit (through Peter Bellas' sensitive and thoughtful promotion), he seems to be at the end of a long period in which he has been reflecting on symbology. Whatever