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Exhibition 2

The gallery has a number of exhibitions, but I mainly focused on the Amie Siegel exhibition and the exhibition from Christopher Mahon.

By Christopher Mahon.

VISUAL is pleased to present Sincere, or what you will, a solo exhibition by Irish artist Christopher Mahon. 

Mahon works across a range of media including sculpture, painting, photography, installation and performance, and his practice is notable for the variety of disciplines and materials used. He has worked with actors and dancers to create site-responsive environments that combine the mundane and theatrical, and often incorporates found objects in the finished piece. 

For several years Mahon has maintained a studio in Cairo, Egypt, basing much of his sculptural production on the techniques and capabilities of the small industrial workshops – the foundries, metal-, stone- and wood-working studios – that dot the city’s backstreets. 

Mahon’s sculptures occupy the unstable space between lyricism and materiality, the concrete and ineffable. His materials reference the form and patina of everyday objects and their archaeological forebears. Figurative and decorative elements – carved stone arms, cast brass urns, found textiles – speak to both the historical context and daily domesticity. His material language embraces the mechanical detritus of the modern metropolis. Once functional objects now beyond repair, furniture so broken that no one will give it houseroom. The twisted fragments, nuts, bolts, cogs, pipes, of an obsolete infrastructure are repurposed or recreated so they can play their part as elements in a newly finished work. 

Take BAI GAMAYKA, a key work in Sincere, or what you will. The seemingly meaningless set of brass sans-serif letters mounted on the wall reproduces the sign that hangs above one of Cairo’s few remaining downtown bars. The cursive flourish of the r fell off long ago and there is no soft g in colloquial Egyptian pronunciation. Bar Jamaica/BAI GAMAYKA hangs opposite The Sky so Blue, a scrawled handwritten phrase that has been recreated in outsized aluminium letters that hang floating in space; half-baked poetry facing off against a hard-bitten bar. 

The exhibition’s title Sincere, or what you will foregrounds the artist’s interest in the ambiguous, the porous, the making things whole anew, if only temporarily. While it is now widely accepted that sincere derives from the Latin sincerus meaning clean, pure, sound, a common folk etymology has it that sincere is derived from the Latin sine, without, and cera, wax. The phrase was used to describe a perfect marble sculpture with no cracks needing to be filled with wax to trick unwary buyers. “or what you will” is drawn from the full title of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, a romantic comedy replete with love triangles and protagonists in disguise. The play was written to be performed on the twelfth night of Christmas or the feast of the Ephiphany, a holiday that shifts around the calendar depending on the Eastern or Western Christan tradition, and which now marks the boundary between an extended holiday period and the imminent return to work. 

This exhibition, too, exists on the boundary between places and times both real and reimagined, where memories and materials can appear and dissolve and reappear anew. 

Sincere, or what you will is co-curated by Benjamin Stafford (VISUAL) and Rachael Gilbourne (IMMA, RGKSKSRG). A text by Gilbourne, An Ode to Spring, from the End of Winter, to the Start of Summer, accompanies the exhibition and is available here and at the gallery. 

Christopher Mahon is an Irish artist and the work for VISUAL was produced in his studio in Cairo. He attended the École Jacques Lecoq Movement Research Laboratory, Paris, holds an MA in Art and Research Collaboration from IADT and was a resident at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam 2018–2019. Mahon has exhibited in Ireland and internationally. Projects include Paris Art Book Fair, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2024), Aswan International Sculpture Symposium (2021), Rijksakademie Open Studios, Amsterdam (2019), Le Menagerie de Verre, Paris (2019), Townhouse Gallery, Cairo (2019), RGKSKSRG Cribs, Dublin (2019), Double Negative, ARKO Art Centre, Seoul (2018) and Active Archive, Project Arts Centre, Dublin (2018). Mahon’s work is held in private and public collections in Ireland, Europe and North America.

By Amie Siegel

VISUAL is pleased to present Asterisms, a solo exhibition by Amie Siegel. Siegel is an American artist who lives in Brooklyn, New York, and works across film, video, photography, sculpture, painting and installation. 

Asterisms is both a moving-image work and a sculptural installation, its uniquely star-shaped wall of overlapping images built to a scale the artist proposed in response to the architecture of VISUAL’s Main Gallery. An asterism is a loose collection of stars that form a pattern, similar to but smaller than a constellation. This notion of disparate elements combining to form a complete image is key to both Asterisms itself, and to Siegel’s practice in general, in which deep research produces artworks that address cultural, political and social questions.

The setting and context of Asterisms is the United Arab Emirates, a place that has modernized at a rapid pace, built on wealth originally derived from ownership of natural resources. Throughout Siegel’s cinematic work the viewer encounters images of factories, labour, commerce, leisure, technology, humans, and animals. These elements are interwoven in the artist’s careful montage and in the various cinematically-scaled geometries that build and layer over time, both in their accumulation of meaning but also as the images dynamically overlap and connect on the star-shaped wall. Horses play a role in the work, and are seen stabled in luxurious accommodation, in sharp contrast with the conditions in which migrant labourers live and work. Horse’s flanks echo the shape of sand dunes and seem to merge with the landscape. The material of that same desert landscape – sand – is everywhere; kicked up into dust by hooves, encroaching on buildings, filling the doorways and windows and almost totally burying houses. Sand is dumped onto artificial islands, to arrest their rapid erosion back into the sea.

These artificial islands comprise a development designed to mimic a map of the world when viewed from above. Despite having once been a flagship project of the Emirate of Dubai, they are no longer promoted by the government. They hide in plain sight, simultaneously visible and invisible. In one of the later shots in Asterisms, the camera zooms out from a party on one of the islands, where a crowd drinks and dances by a swimming pool. As the partygoers recede into the distance, the lights of the sole inhabited island in a sea of dark ones makes them appear as distant and alone as a star hanging in a night sky.

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On show in VISUAL’s Digital Gallery is Siegel’s RM, a series of photographs of radioactive minerals. This group of works allude to Asterisms both in their constellation-like display, individually illuminated in a darkened space, and their own almost astral representations, glowing gently in dark matter. Many of the minerals Siegel photographed are pseudomorphs, or “false forms”, an occurrence where one mineral’s substance is entirely replaced by another while retaining its outward physical appearance. In each of these differently scaled works, the inherent danger of the radioactive material contrasts with their jewel-like colours and forms, their true nature disguised.

Alongside these works Siegel presents Listening to the Universe (2014), a work-on-paper and act of montage derived from the artist's collection of science and space museum postcards, presenting the vacuum of sound that is outer space, and our continual efforts to listen, or know, our sphere and beyond.

Asterisms is a commission of the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil and VIA Art Fund. Additional support by KTLO, Los Angeles.

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Amie Siegel (b. 1974, Chicago, IL) is a visual artist working variously with film, video, photography, sound, performance and installation. She is known for her layered, meticulously constructed works that trace and perform the undercurrents of systems of value, cultural ownership and image-making.

Recent solo exhibitions include��Panorama, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2023); Bloodlines, Scottish National Museum Gallery of Modern Art (2022); The Silence, ArkDes, Stockholm (2022); Medium Cool, Blaffer Art Museum, Houston (2019); In Focus: Amie Siegel – Provenance, Tate St. Ives (2018); Winter, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (2017); Strata, South London Gallery (2017); Double Negative, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich (2016); Ricochet, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (2016) and Imitation of Life, Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin (2016). She has participated in the 34th São Paulo Bienal; 12th Gwangju Biennial; Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh; Glasgow International, Scotland; 5th Auckland Triennial, New Zealand; and the Whitney Biennial, among numerous other group exhibitions. 

Siegel’s work is in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate, London; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; The Art Institute of Chicago; Kunstmuseum Stuttgart; Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand; MAK-Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Whitney Museum, New York and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Her films have screened at the Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, Rotterdam and New York film festivals. She has been a fellow of the DAAD Berliner-Künstlerprogramm and Guggenheim Foundation, a Fulton Fellow at The Film Study Center at Harvard University and a Smithsonian Artist Fellow. Siegel has received numerous grants and awards including from the Sundance Institute, Princess Grace Foundation, ICA Boston (Foster Prize), Creative Capital, Anonymous Was a Woman and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York. In 2023 she was an Artist-in-Residence at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT.

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Exhibition

23rd of October

They have a private collection upstairs, They also have on going o'Malley collection that is on show.

Ciara Roche, The 'honeymoon' exhibition

12th oct- 1st Dec

This exhibition takes place in there largest area, the main gallery.

Butler Gallery is very pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Wexford-born artist Ciara Roche. This is the artist’s first large-scale museum exhibition in Ireland. 

This suite of paintings on canvas and paper refer to domestic scenes and public places with source imagery derived from the artist’s own photography, film stills and found imagery. Roche continues to explore representational image-making using wet and quickly applied oil paint to create a sense of luminosity and movement on the surface. The paintings explore places and themes that range from exclusive anonymous hotels to empty 24-hour cafés. 

For this exhibition, Roche has embraced new challenges and created her largest paintings to date. The process, she says, was akin to learning a new language. The paintings were realised by translating her smaller sketchbook sized works onto a substantially larger framework. Figuring out materials and brushes that worked well for this new format took a while to master but the resultant paintings have been achieved with great skill and an acute awareness on how far to push things.

The Late Lounge, Roche’s largest painting to date, is both an interior and a window out to a city scape. We are invited to step into a high end restaurant, or perhaps it is a bar, complete with grand piano, and insulated against what might be happening in a corporate blue city beyond. Glass Table, like many of the paintings on view, presents more questions than answers: who sits here and what schemes are conjured up around this glass table? People are purposely missing from these paintings; the viewer is encouraged to insert themselves into the scene and create their own narrative. 

There is frequently an unease in Roche’s paintings, a sort of critique of this hugely capitalistic world we live in. She is often struck by the dark side of scenarios and says that her solution is ‘to paint those fears, acknowledging the things that might happen, like exploring different versions of my life’. Viewing the works in this exhibition is like entering an uncanny world of suspense made up of light and shadow. These lushly rendered paintings, either small or large, capture timeless moments for the viewer to ponder. The rewards are wonderful.

curated by: Claire Keegan

"I don't paint people into my paintings because if I were to put a figure in them, then it would feel like the viewers couldn't go in and imagine themselves in that space... I like the idea of being able to let your mind wander and fill in the empty spaces".

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Marbling

The quality of a surface that has streaks of color, like marble

The patterns are formed by first floating the colors on the surface of a liquid, and then laying the paper or fabric onto the colors to absorb them.

looking through ancient volumes full of arcane recipes for mixing such exotic ingredients as Irish moss seaweed, spirits of green soap, and distilled bile from the gall bladder of an ox.

They were used for decorative purposes, and also as a background for official documents and signatures, to prevent erasure and forgery. 

The traditional marbling inks were just not durable enough to stand up to washing. Now, though, fine marbling can be done just as easily on cloth as on paper with these new paints, and modern colors are much more vivid and brilliant and long-lasting than ever in the past.

Stone Marble:  Gives the effect of real marble.  Stone marbles are the simplest patterns, but they often take longer to make than the more complex combed patterns, because so many thousands of tiny droplets of color must be applied.

Marble

Marble is metamorphosed limestone, quartzite is metamorphosed sandstone, and gneiss, another common metamorphic rock, sometimes begins as granite.

Metamorphic rocks are sedimentary or igneous rocks that have been transformed by pressure, heat, or the intrusion of fluids. The heat may come from nearby magma or hot water intruding via hot springs. It can also come from subduction, when tectonic forces draw rocks deep beneath the Earth's surface.

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Dorothea Rockburne, "D" Study for Scalar, (chipboard, crude oil, paper and nails), 1970 [Craig Starr Gallery, New York, NY. © Dorothea Rockburne / ARS, New York]

Exhibition: Dorothea Rockburne: Works 1967-1972, September 7 – October 20, 2012

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Sediment

Rock salt, also known as halite, forms as oceans evaporate. Oceans are made of salt water. When the water enters the atmosphere as vapor, it leaves the salt behind. The Bonneville Salt Flats, in the U.S. state of Utah, are flat desert areas covered by a layer of rock salt sediment. Lake Bonneville, the ancient seathat once covered the area, has long since evaporated.

SALT OF THE BAY

“I’m fascinated and drawn to these shapes and colors at sunset,” says Your Shot member Jassen T., who captured this aerial image of a salt marsh in northern California’s San Francisco Bay. “It’s a very unique and photogenic area.”

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Muriel Napoli

Nature 391 painting

Acrylic on Canvas 100 by 140 cm

Nature 377 Painting

Acrylic on canvas 160 by 100 cm

Nature 362 painting

Acrylic on canvas 80 by 80 cm

My paintings are a tribute to nature's unwavering spirit of transformation, untouched by human intervention, from the dawn of time to the present day. The mighty oceans and their formation, the arrival of life-sustaining water, the laying down of sediment, the fiery fury of magma, the creation of coal, the birth of celestial bodies, accretion, geological wonders...these are but a few of the subjects I seek to illuminate. Through the harmonious blending of organic and mineral elements, I strive to evoke nature's symphony of change. In my art, I aspire to strip away all that is artificial, the vestiges of human tampering, and present a celestial vision of the natural world, pure and unblemished.

Artist Statement What is found in my pictures is nature's ability to change independently of the action of humanity, from its origins to today. The formation of the oceans, the origin of water on Earth, sedimentation, fire, magma, formation of coal, of planets, accretion, geological phenomenon ...I mix organic, mineral, the elements and various displays of these elements. I eliminate, as much as possible, everything that humanity has added to the world, all the changes introduced, everything which is artificial. My work tends to connect the world to beings and things, to form a whole, an entirety.

Muriel Napoli is a talented French painter whose works have been exhibited in USA, Italy and France. Seeking to remove elements of pure superficiality or attractiveness, she creates impactful abstract works marked by a unique colour combination, sweeping shapes and a striking sense of space.

What is found in the paintings of Muriel Napoli is the capacity that the nature of transforming independently of the action of man, from origin to the present. Formation of oceans, origin of water on earth, sedimentation, fire, magma, coal formation, planets, accretion, geological phenomena ... "I mix the plant, the mineral, the elements and the different manifestations of these elements. I make the most of everything that man added to the world, all the transformations brought by him, which is artificial. My work tends to link the universe to beings and things, to form a whole, a whole. "

lyrical abstraction

Passing on her emotions, feelings, transitional ideas that materialize on canvas through flat tints of the material, oil, knife directly positioned on the floor, on the frame, without any reference to reality itself.

"My ambition is to lead the viewer to think, to meditate, perhaps to dream"

Installation view 2021

Muriel Napoli, an abstract painter with a passion for the beauty of nature, recently embarked on a remarkable artistic adventure in Vietnam. During her one-month artist residency program in Ho Chi Minh City, she was captivated by the astonishing richness of Vietnamese nature. Today, we invite you to join us on a three-minute artistic exploration with Muriel as she shares her techniques and the deep inspiration she drew from this awe-inspiring environment.

Muriel’s artistic process is a harmonious blend of instinct and technique. She meticulously selects her materials, ensuring they can capture the essence of the natural world she seeks to convey on her canvas. With a palette of fluid and vibrant colors, she sets out to create a visual symphony that celebrates the simplicity and beauty of the Vietnamese landscape.

Muriel’s dedication to capturing the essence of nature goes beyond the visual realm. She strives to infuse her paintings with the very essence of the flowers, fruits, and vegetation that so inspired her. Through texture, layering, and the interplay of light and shadow, Muriel breathes life into her art, inviting viewers to immerse themselves in the beauty and serenity of the natural world.

Nature 326

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Christopher Wool

Christopher Wool is best known for his paintings of large, black, stenciled letters on white canvases, but he possesses a wide range of styles; using a combined array of painterly techniques, including spray painting, hand painting, and screen-printing, he provides tension between painting and erasing, gesture and removal, depth and flatness. By painting layer upon layer of whites and off-whites over screen-printed elements used in previous works—monochrome forms taken from reproductions, enlargements of details of photographs, screens, and Polaroids of his own paintings—he accretes the surface of his pressurized paintings while apparently voiding their very substance. Only ghosts and impediments to the field of vision remain, each fixed in its individual temporality. Through these various procedures of application and cancellation, Wool obscures the liminal traces of previous elements, putting reproduction and negation to generative use in forming a new chapter in contemporary painting. His paintings can therefore be defined as much by what they are not and what they hold back as what they are.

Wool has forged an agile, highly focused practice that incorporates a variety of processes and mediums, paying special attention to the complexities of painting.

Untitled, 2012

Silkscreen ink on linen 120 by 96 inches

...Stupid Rabbit, 2004

enamel on linen 96by 72 inches

Give it Up or Turn It Loose, 1994

Enamel on aluminium 78 by 60 inches

A central tenet of Christopher Wool’s (b. 1955) practice is the very process of painting itself. This has been explored and developed since his early years through reducing form and colour, as well as experimenting with different painting styles and reproduction techniques, such as silkscreen or pattern rollers, overlaying and erasing, covering or obscuring with paint, and adding layers on top. The range of techniques Wool has used over the years makes reference to the processes and gestures that have marked contemporary art history. The artist’s complex work encourages the viewer to reflect on the physical qualities of paint and various modes of reproduction, while honing an awareness of painting procedures and the essential elements of the medium: colour, form and line.

‘Christopher Wool’s paintings seem to capture visual urban experience, carved out of a moment for the duration of an artwork – an artwork that coverts the structures of experience into the structures of painting. Non-specific moments and impressions are lifted out of context and fixed into details of a painting that, unlike graffiti, conveys the speed and concentration of its origin only when it is contemplated over a measure of time in an art space. The dynamic of the picture’s conception becomes, very gradually, the dynamite of the thought it contains. Thought pictures.’

Christopher Wool’s paintings and prints explore the confluence of image, text, and pattern. They often feature enigmatic, confrontational found phrases or illegible scribbles, which are either stencilled or plastered in black across flat white fields. The artist occasionally covers the compositions with spray-paint marks and screen-printed elements (some taken from his previous works), erasing and relayering as he goes. His process—which focuses on the possibilities of reproduction, appropriation, and accretion—is as important as the results themselves. Wool studied at Sarah Lawrence College and the New York Studio School. New York’s vibrant 1970s downtown No Wave and punk scenes became major influences, and Wool reached his mature style in the mid-1980s. Wool has exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Paris, Tokyo, Berlin, and beyond, and his work belongs in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou, and the Tate. His work has achieved eight figures on the secondary market.

Untitled 1988

Enamel and flash on aluminium 96 by 72

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Floral paintings by Muriel Napoli

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Sam Gillan

Watercolour, 4 1969

Watercolor, and aluminum powder on fiberglass paper 23 3/4 x 18 1/8" (60.3 x 45.9 cm)

Blurring the boundaries between painting, sculpture, and installation, Sam Gilliam wrestles with the physicality of the art object and its relationship to the viewer.

he moved to Washington, DC, during the formation of Color Field painting, which emphasized the use of flat planes of color and novel paint application techniques.

Gilliam soon experimented with color, form, and technique, pouring pigments and folding canvases while still wet. 

 remove his canvases from their stretchers entirely, and, inspired by laundry on clotheslines, hang them from the ceiling or walls.

Gilliam transformed painting into something sculptural and three-dimensional, disrupting traditional modes of presentation and viewing. 

He also incorporated metal forms, alternative materials like yarn and glitter, varied applications of paint, and quilt-inspired patterning into his practice.

“the expressive act of making a mark and hanging it in space is always political. My work is as political as it is formal.”

Sam Gilliam, Green April, 1969,

acrylic on canvas, 98 x 271 x 3 7/8 inches (248.9 x 688.3 x 9.8 cm), Collection of Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, Switzerland, Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, photography by Lee Thompson.

his lyrical abstractions took on an increasing variety of forms, moods, and materials.

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Water Lilies painted by Claude Monet (1840 - 1926)

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* * *

“I’d rather risk an ugly surprise than rely on things I know I can do.”

- Helen Frankenthaler.

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Helen Frankenthaler

Midnight Shore

2002

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YOURS, JUST THE WORD AND I WILL BE THERE.

1. letters to felice, frank kafka | 2. strangers, ethel cain | 3. overture (1992), helen frankenthaler | 4. desperation sits heavy on my tongue, a.m | 5. against the loveless world: a novel, susan abulhawa | 6. a green thought in a green scale (1981), helen frankenthaler | 7. wife, mitski | 8. ruth 1:16 | 9. lush spring (1975), helen frankenthaler | 10. no exit, jean-paul sartre

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Helen Frankenthaler

"There are no rules... that is how art is born, that is how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules, that is what invention is about."

has long been recognized as one of the great American artists of the twentieth century. 

She was eminent among the second generation of postwar American abstract painters and is widely credited for playing a pivotal role in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Color Field painting. 

Through her invention of the soak-stain technique, she expanded the possibilities of abstract painting, while at times referencing figuration and landscape in unique ways.

Towards a New Climate, 1957

Oil on canvas 70 x 98 in. (177.8 x 248.9 cm)

The Bay, 1963

Acrylic on canvas 80 3/4 x 81 3/4 inches  (205 x 208 cm) Detroit Institute of Art, Michigan

A Green Thought in a Green Shade, 1981

Acrylic on canvas 119 x 156 1/2 inches (302.3 x 397.5 cm)

Grey Fireworks, 1982

Acrylic on canvas 72 x 118 1/2 inches (182.9 x 301 cm) Private Collection

Close up, Grey Fireworks, 1982

Untitled, 1962

Oil on paper 19 1/8 x 24 7/8 inches (48.6 x 63.2 cm)

Canal Street XIV, 1987

Acrylic on paper 24 1/2 x 39 1/2 inches  (62.2 x 100.3 cm)

Kiss, 2003

Acrylic on paper 8 x 10 inches (20.3 x 25.4 cm)

Cool Summer, 1962

Oil on canvas, 69 ¾ × 120 inches (177.2 × 304.8 cm) (C) 9018 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Nature Abhors a Vaccum, 1973

Acrylic on canvas, 103 ½ × 112 inches (262.9 x 284.5 cm), National Gallery of Art, Washington, © 2018 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation,

Syzygy, 1987

Acrylic on canvas, 88 / X 59 ½ inches (224.2 x 151.1 cm)| © 2018 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, inc. Artists kiants society Aro. New york

A line, color, shapes, spaces, all do one thing for and within themselves, and yet do something else, in relation to everything that is going on within the four sides [of the canvas]. A line is a line, but [also] is a color. . . . It does this here, but that there. The canvas surface is flat and yet the space extends for miles. What a lie, what trickery—how beautiful is the very idea of painting. —Helen Frankenthaler

End of Summer, 1995

Acrylic on paper, 78 × 78 inches (198.1 × 198.1 cm) 9094 1een Trankentna pr rAlinearan Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Untitled, 1996

Acrylic and charcoal on paper, 40 ¼ × 60 ⅛ inches (102.2 × 152.7 cm) © 2024 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New

“I’ve always worked on paper,” she noted in 1996, “but not conceived on the scale of my canvases. . . . The shift was a tremendous move for me.”

The paintings in the exhibition reveal her exploration of the material and compositional possibilities of working on paper: new kinds of chromatic juxtapositions and painterly gestures, often set down on a smoother surface than canvas.

At several earlier moments in her career, Frankenthaler had added more visibly dense brushstrokes and applications of pigment to the revolutionary soak-stain technique she had pioneered in the early 1950s. This approach became a constant in her late compositions. After working directly on the floor during the first four decades of her career, she began painting on large, waist-high tabletops, a concession to her age; the turn to painting on paper also coincided with her increased activity in printmaking.

"My pictures are full of climates, abstract climates, and not nature per se. But a feeling. And the feeling of an order that is associated more with nature. Nature in seasons, maybe; but nature in, well, an order. And I think art itself is order out of chaos." —Helen Frankenthaler

In her pioneering work of the 1950s, inspired by Jackson Pollock, Frankenthaler had poured both linear tracks and spreading areas of thinned paint onto unprimed canvas. 

Challenged the established norms of brushwork and control. By allowing the paint to seep and bleed into the fabric, she embraced the unpredictable nature of the medium and introduced an element of spontaneity and freedom into her process. This unleashed a dynamic interplay of colours and forms, creating works that were vibrant, alive, and deeply expressive.

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James Turrell

influenced by the notion of pure feeling in pictorial art

constructing light and painting with light

building on the sensorial experience of space, color, and perception.

Turrell produced some of his first light sculptures, using gases to create flat flames that burned in even colors.

James Turrell, From Aten Reign, 2016,

Ukiyo-e Japanese style woodcut with relief printing, 26" × 18-1/2" (66 cm × 47 cm), Edition of 30 + 6 APs © James Turrell

work with high-intensity projectors as a light source, producing the first of his Projection Pieces, Afrum-Proto.

These studies of perceptual anomalies further ignited his interest in the celestial realm, and he began to incorporate aviation into his practice by creating sky drawings with the artist Sam Francis.

Turrell’s practice has equally materialized in small-scale works, including architectural models, holograms, and works on paper.

A leading figure of the Light and Space movement, James Turrell creates colored light installations and holographs that produce awe-inspiring optical illusions: Turrell’s pieces can look like cubes, flat planes, pyramids, or tunnels, when they’re simply composed of light. The artist studied at the University of California, Irvine, before attending the art and technology program at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. There, he worked alongside fellow light artist Robert Irwin and honed his now-signature process and aesthetic. Turrell’s work has been shown in institutions around the world, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and Museo Jumex, among others. Since the 1970s, Turrell has been working on a celestial light observatory at the Roden Crater in Arizona.

Roden Crater Site Plan along the Summer Solstice Axis, 2024

Gold leaf and glass 18 × 14 1/5 × 5 in | 45.7 × 36.1 × 12.7 cm Edition 3/30 Part of a limited edition set

Roden Crater Site Plan, 2020

Inkjet Blueprint 44 1/10 × 54 1/10 in | 112 × 137.3 cm Edition 9/100 Part of a limited edition set

Yus-Asaph, Rectangular Glass, 2021

LED light, etched glass and shallow space 46 × 62 in | 116.8 × 157.5 cmUnique work

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Hughie O'Donoghue

Born in Manchester, Hughie O’Donoghue now lives and works in rural Ireland. O’Donoghue has internationally since 1982 and is considered one of the leading painters of his generation. His work is represented in public collections, including the National Gallery, London, the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester and the Arts Council of England. The solo exhibition ‘Hughie O’Donoghue: Recent Paintings and Selected Works from the American Ireland Fund Donation’ was held at IMMA in 2009

Laocoon, 2003

Medium: Oil on linen canvas in 3 panels

Dimensions: Unframed, 305 x 468 cm 

O’Donoghue uses figuration and abstraction to explore themes of human identity, memory, and experience; and draws on history, mythology, and personal records to create works that resonate with emotional intensity.

Fallen Elm (Kilfane) Oil on board, 71 x 122cm (28 x 48") Signed, inscribed and dated 2007/'8 verso

Evening Kilfane, Co. Kilkenny Oil on canvas, 68 x 104cm (26¾ x 41") Signed; signed inscribed and dated 2007 verso

His work is abstract in style, presenting the human body as distorted and blurred forms, drawn in thick and heavy brushstrokes. He often applies numerous layers of paint, or includes photographs or documentary sources within the canvas, covered in more paint.

 The surfaces of his canvas are full of texture, in which the material takes paramount importance

This process of layering reflects O'Donoghue's interest in engaging with historical narratives, often personal in nature, so that he can express the serial form of experience and memory.  

"painting is archaeology in reverse"

“The colours in my paintings are also intense, but in my work there’s never only one reason for why something is the way it is. I suppose I deliberately court the intensity of colour to mirror the intensity of feeling that comes with memory.

fascinated by the passing of time

For him, painting is a form of both archaeology and remembrance

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Generative Art

"Generative art is art made using a predetermined system that often includes an element of chance – is usually applied to computer based art"

The practice has its roots in dada, yet it was the pioneering artist Harold Cohen who was considered one of the first practitioners of generative art when he used computer-controlled robots to generate paintings in the late 1960s. More recently the Turner Prize winner Keith Tysonbuilt an ArtMachine, a complex recursive system that generated detailed propositions for artworks for Tyson to make.

The term generative art is predominantly used in reference to a certain kind of art made on the net, particularly because artists devise programs that can be accessed and controlled by the public. Generative art is also associated with process art