Kyle Sattler Paintings at Satellite Gallery in Auckland is a fresh and relevant exhibition by a talented artist working in a unique vernacular.

Kyle Sattler Paintings at Satellite Gallery in Auckland is a fresh and relevant exhibition by a talented artist working in a unique vernacular.

Kyle Sattler is a highly skilled realist and symbolist painter who harks back to the renaissance with his clear, finely detailed style and metaphysical subject matter. But his paintings are very much of this time in their re-visioning of this historic approach.

Sattler honed his considerable painting skills as a trompe l’oeil artist, itself somewhat of a lost art. In this role he would use precise traditional techniques to create the illusion of marble in paint and produce gigantic frescos in extravagantly detailed renaissance styles to grace elegant homes in Auckland.

On canvas Sattler uses traditional oil painting techniques and lush mediums resulting in a unique bold colourist style with clear references to early-mid 20th century European painters such as Maurice Denis, Pablo Picasso, Gustav Klimt, Giorgio De Chirico and the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera.

Sattler’s self-styled symbolic-realist art is about the Metaphysical. Vividly colourful and often intense, his paintings utilise iconic symbols from our art historical popular culture.

Sattler’s powerful symbols have clear references to the knowledge and art of specific periods in Western history: Adam and Eve; diagrammatic depictions of early dissections, medieval envisioning of ancient Geocentric universe; the tree of life; the skewed perspective of a renaissance image of a classic temple.

These symbols, shown in their traditional painted form, talk about the history of our depiction of the world, and the ways we have explained and understood the world through time. Sattler brings these images to the contemporary viewer to demonstrate their continued relevance and call attention to the extent to which they underlie and inform our contemporary identity.

Don’t miss it – get along to Satellite gallery between 25 August and 5th September. All works are for sale, with prices ranging from $300.00 to $3,000.00.