As seen in London and Paris (On show, by David Bromfield) The West Australian big weekend, Saturday June 23, 2001, p. 6 Gadfly Gallery in Waratah Avenue, Dalkeith, is showing Poles Apart, paintings by brother and sister Max and Julie Podstolski. Max lives in New Zealand and is a more than competent painter in the high modernist manner that emerged from the School of Paris and surrealism, in the 1940s and 50s. He combines modernist motifs in strips and panels to evoke its full spectrum of associations. Modernism was essentiallty optimistic, as is Podstolski. Whether in the icons of desire and fear ­ birds, animals, demigods, in for instance, The Sleep of Reason, or the comic adventure of Woof!, this half-forgotten humanist adventure is fully present. It would be easy to dismiss Podstolski's work as decoration save for this joyous aura. Sister Julie, on the other hand, lives in Perth and produces smooth, brightly glowing urban views and landscapes like technicolour photos, which deny everything the moderns believed about painting as an anti-illusionist icon ­ an image which always declared its artificiality to the viewer. Her postcard-perfect views of Fremantle such as South Mole with its geometrically regulated tones and precisely placed seabirds are as far away as possible from the expressive freedoms of brother Max. Perhaps artistic freedom is only possible for optimists.   BACK