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Gian Manik, Cool burning (2022). Installation view. Image courtesy the artist + ACCA, Melbourne.
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Gian Manik in Like a Wheel That Turns (2022). Exhibition view. Image courtesy the artist + ACCA, Melbourne.
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Gian Manik, A mourning cloak and two wet towels (2022). Installation view. Image courtesy the artist + ACCA, Melbourne.
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Gian Manik, Stuva/Medicine (2022). Installation view. Image courtesy the artist + ACCA, Melbourne.
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Gian Manik in Like a Wheel That Turns (2022). Exhibition view. Image courtesy the artist + ACCA, Melbourne.
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Gian Manik, Pain (2022). Installation view. Image courtesy the artist + ACCA, Melbourne.
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Gian Manik, Faberge pansy I & II (2022). Installation view. Image courtesy the artist + ACCA, Melbourne.
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Gian Manik, Victory and conflict (2022). Installation view. Image courtesy the artist + ACCA, Melbourne.
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Gian Manik in Like a Wheel That Turns (2022). Exhibition view. Image courtesy the artist + ACCA, Melbourne.
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Flesh, hidden histories & homoeroticism in the visceral paintings of Gian Manik

, 15 August 2022
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Like a Wheel That Turns: The 2022 Macfarlane Commissions, featuring a presentation of new works by Gian Manik, is on at Melbourne’s Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), running July 2 to September 4.

Gian Manik, Victory and conflict (2022). Installation view. Image courtesy the artist + ACCA, Melbourne.

With detailed and visceral paintings, Manik appropriates the medium’s history, skewing the styles of Dutch painters and Australian colonial artists, using references to the artist’s childhood, gay sexuality and AI generated source material. A response from writer Tristen Harwood builds on the layered homoeroticism in the works: “I hear the soldiers in gay porn really are real soldiers, their bodies already sacrificed, all they have are their holes to offer. Injured tulips blooming, opening in the wintry cold some completely red and some terribly yellow others shaded by both to soften the blows of this and that.”**

Like a Wheel That Turns: The 2022 Macfarlane Commissions, featuring a presentation of new works by Gian Manik, is on at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), Melbourne, running July 2 to September 4, 2022.

scroll up for images (9)

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Australian Centre for Contemporary Art Gian Manik
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