April 1, 2025 – April 26, 2025

Correlations: From the Past to the Present

Michelle Molinari

Introduction

Michelle Molinari presents a body of new work that responds to the representation and depiction of animals in both Eastern and Western art histories. Reflecting on her recent travels throughout Japan, Molinari’s work seeks to juxtapose and explore the influence of Japanese art within the still-life genre.

"In 'Correlations: Past and Present', I explore the intriguing and complex ways in which animals have been depicted in both Eastern and Western art traditions, with a focus on the contrasting visual language of Japanese ukiyo-e and European painting. These two art forms, though separated by geography and culture, often present animals as symbols, creatures of beauty, or subjects that communicate deeper themes about humanity and nature. Through this body of work, I seek to highlight the nuanced differences and similarities in how these two worlds perceive and represent the animal kingdom, by forming a dialogue between the past and present; the dead and the living; and our relationship with the natural world.

In European painting, animals are often presented within a context of realism or allegory, frequently linked to ideas of the sublime or the pastoral. In contrast, ukiyo-e, frequently imbues animals with elements of anthropomorphism. This representation reflects a distinct cultural attitude where animals are not merely subjects of nature but part of an interconnected world with humans.

The influence of anthropomorphism in ukiyo-e is deeply tied to the spiritual and philosophical beliefs of Japan, where animals are often seen as symbolic of larger metaphysical concepts such as transformation, fate, and the cyclical nature of life. In works like those by Katsushika Hokusai or Utagawa Kuniyoshi, animals such as cats, birds, and foxes are depicted with human-like features or emotions, inviting viewers to reflect on the relationship between humans and the natural world. These anthropomorphized creatures act as mediators between the human and the divine, the earthly and the spiritual, embodying the delicate balance of nature and the human experience."
Artist Statement - Michelle Molinari

Catalogue essay by Sarah Jones

.…It seems the universe has contracted to be this but only for today. Carolyn Leach-Paholskii

In Hokusai in the Antipodes – Thirty-six- Love Letters to a Mountain, poet Caroline Leach-Paholski invokes Katsushika Hokusai’s study of Mt Fuji to describe her own beloved Wurdi Youang. Her poem is a love letter both to the granite monadnock that she paints anew each day, as well as to Hokusai’s fervent study. Michelle Molinari’s Correlations: From the past to the present returned me to Leach-Paholski’s Hokusai-framed view. The central work for the exhibition at Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne, features a reimagining of Hokusai’s Block of Chickens. It is immediately recognisable, and yet it is fundamentally altered. The seven fowl in Hokusai’s unique oval design, originally shaped for a paper fan, are joined by 3 additional hens, Molinari’s own, that fill the picture plane to square. The lustrous gold of Hokusai’s bird’s feathers are expertly captured in Molinari’s small flock, but the sharp lines and the inquisitive eyes of those live birds remain in Hokusai’s past. In the new foreground, the present lays limp. Molinari’s addition of a dark horizon to the brilliant blue of the original drags the eye downwards to the soft new death. Seven old chickens mourn three freshly deceased birds upon a new ground. While in previous works, exquisitely rendered creatures retreat in their eternal rest, in Ascending to Hokusai’s Flock of Chickens (2025), three sets of closed eyes loll towards us with such fragility that you could almost miss time falling from under your feet. This is Molinari’s inimitable skill, the illusion of time arrested, a contraction of the universe...but only for today.

Correlations: From the past to the present, approaches works by Hokusai, Utagawa Hiroshige and Imao Keinen, works Molinari encountered on a recent research trip to Japan. In her dedicated studies, she alternates between reproducing the spacious compositional elements, the inked line work and the expert colour rendering of Ukiyo-e and Kachō-e, in and among her own painterly techniques. She deconstructs and painstakingly reassembles, testing and extending her own technical proficiency. The resultant body of work, richly coloured and finely detailed, is chimeric. Vibrant gradients, intersecting planes, caricatured figures and deep cut calligraphic line work meet hyper-realist, still-life oil rendering. Somewhat uncannily, Hokusai’s chickens lie among van Aeist’s; and the floating world, rich with stories and symbolism, permeates the depths of the Vanitas. Molinari’s paintings fold art histories, geographies and eras into truly exquisite corpses.

And each fold is an instructive pause, an invitation to step outside of time’s perpetual pull. The illusionary stilling of time by death remains Molinari’s fascination, and though Correlations: From the past to the present might initially seem a departure from the artist’s usual velvety depths; the message remains: memento mori. Hokusai certainly could not forget. His notoriety is exaggerated by the fact that he died before he thought he should have,ii still obsessively painting Mt Fuji as his enduring ‘peer’; as Molinari paints death as hers. The tactility of those still warm chest feathers pull the hand forward, the eye catches in the gold beneath, as if the spark could re-ignite. The softness of three small deaths is illuminated.

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