Gavin Rain

Gavin Rain, born in Cape Town in 1971, is believed to be one of the greatest contemporary representatives of neo-pointillism or pixelism. Using acrylic like a TV or PC screen, Rain creates his images using simulated pixels. Hence the technique called “hidden in plain sight”. At a close distance, Rain’s paintings appear to be an abstract and punctiform set of colors, but if the spectator moves away, up to a certain distance calculated by the artist, he can then see the subject of the painting: the faces of international showbiz icons.

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The participation of the spectator, not only as a vision but as a moving body, is fundamental in Rain’s work. Thanks to this movement inside the exhibition space, his artwork moves from an abstract stage to a concrete image – and vice versa. The distance of the observation point, the depth of the vision, the condition of the light and the perspective, become interactive elements and act on the fruition of the work until the image is fully recognised.

One of the most important messages of his poetics concerns the ambiguity of the art work. Only from the right distance, the image takes shape and reveals itself. This is why pixelism or neo-pointillism, combined with an artistic mastery, becomes an ideal compositional procedure. He came to neo-pointillism in 2004, while deepening his neuroscience studies further. The distance between the dots that compose his images, refer to the “digital pseudo”, a place where the research on the size and distance of the pixels – which the artist simulates with small concentric points of acrylic paint in different colors and forms – joins the theory of neuroscientific perception.

Rain has created more than 14,000 different color dots as a list, from which he draws for his works. His work is not only about the choice and the size of the point-like colours but it also concerns their relation with the white underlying canvas. Image and image reception are two inseparable elements in the IT era and Rain acquires this paradigm as his artistic motto.

His international fame has led him to become one of the leading artists of the contemporary South African panorama, and he was commissioned by FIFA the creation of 12 portraits for the FIFA World Cup held in South Africa in 2010. Contemporary paradigm and pointillism, abstract and figurative, technical mastery and in-depth scientific studies, together with the audience involvement and an admirable attention to the exhibition space make Gavin Rain a unique artist in the contemporary art arena.

In 2011 he participated in the 54th Venice Art Biennale in the Republic of Costa Rica Pavilion with a portrait of the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi. In 2013 he presented a work entitled Lena for the pavilion of the Republic of Bangladesh.

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