Counting: one, two, three

Imants Tillers’ art explores the ways in which ideas and images migrate between cultures and across time. Since the 1980s, his paintings have been executed on small canvas boards which he numbers sequentially and which he regards as individual elements in an ever-expanding system. He often uses text and imagery borrowed from the work of other artists and writers, creating new amalgams of personal, literary and art historical references.

'Counting: one, two, three' cites three artists whose works have been recurring subjects in Tillers’ art. The numerals are taken from 'Koru, 1, 2, 3' 1965 by Aotearoa New Zealand modernist painter Colin McCahon, whose work, in turn, appropriated motifs from Māori art and design. The dramatic landscape that provides a backdrop to these stylised numerals is based on a painting by Austrian artist Eugene von Guerard, which depicts Whakatipu Waimāori/Lake Wakatipu in the manner of a romantic European landscape. The signature in the lower right appears to be that of the Italian forerunner of surrealism, Giorgio de Chirico. For Tillers, the work of de Chirico invokes a metaphysical realm where time doesn’t exist.