DOMINIC THORPE @ G126

This sort of dovetails neatly with something I've been mulling over a little lately: that the artistic response to AIDS was fairly didactic agit prop stuff seems a logical response to Reaganian silence, an attempt at institution building when establishment power was doing its best to ignore a devastating catastrophe for an inconvenient constituency. It is not that cataclysmic events naturally produce politically motivated art, but silenced voices might find articulation in artistic expression.

With the exception of Mannix Flynn whose work has persistently agitated the religious/political/social forces in the systematising of clerical abuse, I can't really think of many Irish artists who are making work that tries to grapple with an issue that leaves a major scar on the national psyche as well as, in its unfolding, become symbolic of the ways in which contemporary Ireland has come to view itself. I mean maybe this disconnection w/ pre-90s ireland is a major source of a younger generation not really feeling any real relationship w/ this stuff, but even then it sort of helps psychically structure how we see ourselves now "as distinct from then"

Which is why its especially cool to see a young artist who tries to access the trauma of Abuse, and more specifically its broader abusive context of silence, in a way that is ambiguous wrt to historical specificity and vivid in its depiction of its emotional wounding.

I'm lucky, I saw this on the last day as a performance, though the exhibition continued as a display of the residue. The performance itself is an impressive condensation of bad vibes, the claustrophobically blacked out performance space lit only by handheld torches, like a fresh crime scene. The artist, somnambulantly but noisily trying to escape the gallery, scraping against the walls, splattered w/ his characteristically fractured drawing/writing on the wall (though to be honest I like that aspect more when I saw it included in the g126 group show earlier this year.)

Thorpe seems to draw on early Paul McCarthy, the phase of his career that was at once more formalist and more insidious in its intimations of violence, and the immersive horror of this show is impressive and engaging.

The residue is on display until the end of this week at g126.

Imgs courtesy Dominic Thorpe

http://www.dominicthorpe.net/

"Explore"

This is like my number one pet hate. I'm not gonna pretend that this is not just a left over art-school-bullshit-radar symptom, but one thing that bothers me whenever I go to see almost any show that leans heavily on establishing itself in its own artist statement/press release, is the use of this little weasel word. Explore. The main problem I have with this word is that it seems to imply an expansiveness wrt the subject matter which often, and not even to the detriment of the work is not even attempted, but I mean....

I feel like exploratory strategies in art imply more than an elucidation, illumination, juxtaposition etc. That exploration becomes the stand in for a vague set of assumptions wrt the relat. b/w the artist and the final product. As though the mere act of artistic mediation becomes in itself an "exploration." I'm not buying it guys.

This, imo, misuse of that particular word feels partic. heinous in instances where the particular concerns of the artist feels kind of modest on a conceptual level. Explore has come to stand for an uncertain and seemingly willingly obfuscated process. And I get where ppl are coming from on this. It is easier to imply a vague strategy w/-in a body of work, esp. when conflicting strategies/instincts/precedents/values constantly seem to disrupt the potential for a coherent and stable voice or elaboration of ideas w/in the oeuvre, even as that condition structures the possibility for the same. At the same time, w/ the deflection of the work onto the statement, which is then deflected onto this seemingly evasive concept of "exploration," the possibility for actual meaning to emerge seems constantly deferred.

ALFRED JENSEN @ DOUGLAS HYDE

Okay, I got confused when I heard about this exhibition and thought I was going to see SERGEJ Jensen, who I love. It wasn't exactly a bad surprise, but rarely have I seen a painting exhibition that felt like so much work. Born in Guatemala, but spending his formative years in Denmark and then France before settling in New York, Jensen's idiosyncratic style drew from an odd set of esoteric sources, from Goethe's colour theories to Mayan calenders. His richly impastoed and vibrantly patterned canvases are at once playful and programmatic, a strangely colourful set of mathematical proofs.

Its sort of, well, maddening, the boxes filled with numbers and strange glyphs constantly seem like puzzles begging to be solved, like those frustrating IQ test things. Its this strange dissonance between order and poetry that gives this work their hypnotic charm, their atavistic half-coherence always setting in motion a system of legibility it shirks its promise to resolve. The fact that the heavily textured surfaces recall tapestries underlines the primevalism and sense of pre-linguistic order that Jensen infuses his work with.

I mean I want to say something about the colour though, the colour is harsh and acidic and really fucking vibrant. Its never really *contained* by the copositions, it seems to push outside it. His shuddering lines don't really to the best job of containing his ostentations colour choices within his ordered geometries. The gingham design of "The Marriage of Odd and Even Numbers" is a bewitching monkey-puzzle, you spend the whole time staring at it, trying to decode its strange logic, even within its formally constraining grid structure (Jensen favours the contiguity of squares rectangles and diamod shapes) the interference between different sequences and cycles resolves itself messily and mysteriously.

LOCKY MORRIS @ MOTHER'S TANKSTATION

There's something really awesome about enjoying a show that does a lot of things that have become automatic turnoffs. The current show, by Derry-based artist Locky Martin, trades in a kind of anecdotal neo-Conceptualism, in the vein of Sophie Calle. I see this stuff more at degree shows & c. and its really something that seems a bit tired. Mainly what was refreshing was that it seemed to abandon the two major crutches that you usually come across with work of this kind: an overly elaborate tricksiness or an over-ripe fascination with its own retro-isms (you know the kind of polaroids and super8 stuff that really gets caught up in empty nostalgia real quick)

The centre-piece of the show is a sound/sculpture installation based on the cover of a recording of Chopin Preludes, a piano seen through a rain-streaked window, a view the artist found eerily like the view of a piano seen through the door of a church near his studio. A photograph of this, along with the record sleeve itself and a haunting, repeated piano chord recorded in the studio itself are hung around a piano top. There's a definite nakedness about the presentation, eloquent and beautiful but no overt cleverness or cute resolution.

I mean there's something throw away, but also fresh-feeling about the photograph of a splayed white dog lying next to an upturned plastic lawn chair, the way it rhymes the forms is funny and smart without being glib and knowing. I guess its an attitude thing I enjoyed about this show, not exactly innovative or new but capable of striking the right chord and with a generous individuality.

I feel like a big part of the kudos for these shows at MTS has to go to the gallery itself. I've been to a few shows here, and while I understand that they have some unique ethos or whatever, I won't pretend I really know what it is, just that whatever it is it seems to work. For a start, every show I've seen here has been so confidently staged, I'm thinking here of the sculpture that is just the empty blister-packets of antacids held in the slide-holder from a projector. But, and I don't think this is beside the point here, it looks good. It sits in the space with a kind of airy insouciance.

I think its a pretty huge credit to this place that I've never managed to go there w/o getting into a coversation of some kind with one of the staff, usually the gallerist herself, and always initiated by them. I mean there's this genuine feeling that they want people to come and see the art on show here, and on this particular occasion i got a lot out of the brief chat I had with the assistant working there. Her take on the pieces was interesting and I especially liked her pointing out the anecdote behind From Day One, the piece which lends its title to the exhibition, a card collar holder from his daughter's shirt left lying on the carpet, preserved here -square piece of carpet and all- in a square glass vitrine. His poor wife she said, imagine the empty square left in their sitting room.

Vertical Thoughts: Morton Feldman and the Visual Arts @ IMMA

The current marquee exhibition at IMMA is strangely high-concept. Based around the collection of minimalist composer and Ab-Ex scenester Morton Feldman, the show is a welcome opportunity to see some high-water American mid-century abstraction along with some, um, rugs.

Feldman's relationship with the irascible set (and the strong influence of post-war NY painting on the development of his compositional style) has meant that Feldman's music has become the de facto soundtrack to late American modernism. This relationship seems crystallized in the use of his music in scoring Hans Namuth's short films of Pollock's and de Kooning's studios, among the most iconic documents of the Abstract Expressionist generation, as well as his elegiac Rothko Chapel.

I had given myself the idea that this was going to include some Barnett Newman's and I was disappointed that it didn't, I also kinda felt like there was a lot of talk about the Pollocks, but as far as i remember, there were only two (one I can't remember at all, the other was absolutely stunning, the name escapes me, but it was enamel and gesso on paper, and had a pulsing lyricism I don't normally expect from Pollock, especially on a small scale)

Feldman's artistic and personal relationship with the New York art scene, ends up providing a really subtle and interesting structure for the show, especially as big, blue chip shows like this can often feel bulky and white-elephantish, the inclusion of the aforementioned Namuth films, as well as a (really hypnotic) film of Mondrian's last studio, helped flesh out and illuminate the overlapping artistic narratives, alluded to in, for eg., a little Philip Guston drawing dedicated to "mortyfeldman" or naming a piece after critic/poet/fire-island casualty Frank O'Hara. I mean a major problem I have with this sometimes is that, and this is really tempting for somebody like me who is a bit too romantic about this era, it becomes way too fetishistic about '50s NYC as a kind of garrulous bohemia, too author-centric, too nostalgic.

A nice thing to be able to say though, is that the work in the show is so top notch that it makes those criticisms feel pretty irrelevent. The Towering Franz Kline for eg. is really virtuoso and thrilling in a way that you don't really see anymore, its dexterity amplified by a thrilling lack of futzing around. Which is funny because the put it right next to a Philip Guston where a gnawing indecision seems to be the only structure for the canvas. (this pairing is pretty much the highlight of the show, and pretty much all the Guston's in this show are awesome and revelatory for me) where rash-like, inflamed reds and pinks disintegrate like a tissue used as a cloth into a meaty dead flesh grey (giving off weirdly ectoplasmic turqoise halos).

Elsewhere, more ink drawings by Guston, some of them feeling real contemporary, have a kind of half-interested verve, that is, a dashed off yet fine-pointed facility with line and an easy way of electrifying a page.

I don't really know what else to say, it is a major disappointment that the final room is a collection of rugs he bought. I mean I guess the curators felt they really needed to the biographical concept of the show, but I really care more about it being a good show to be honest, which, I mean, it was.

Show Runs until 27th June

STEPHEN GUNNING @ MOTHER'S TANKSTATION

I spent longer watching the two videos that comprise this show than i normally do (i am hella philistine abt video in gen.) for a number of reasons but they were all pretty practical. Mother's Tankstation is the furthest out of the city's galleries and since it wasn't open when I walked out past NCAD I had to come back later especially. And it was cold, and I kinda had a headache and I didn't really wanna get back out into the weather so I just kinda chilled there a bit.

And I'm pretty glad I did. Duration feels important in this exhibition. Just inside the door there is a looped shot of a the feet of that Turkish (dancing) where they wear those full length tunic things and spin, I wanna say Dervish. The soundtrack is a bit like some 90's dubby techno with the beats dropped out, slightly menacing and purposeful sub-bass frequencies. Its hypnotic and strange, and in its abstraction of a specific cultural form it signals the theme which is not really so much being discussed in this exhibition as it haunts it or clings to it. Something to do with cultural tourism, a kind of fetishistic Otherness.

The main gallery is a static shot of tourists coming and going from a mosque, taking scarves from the pile provided, putting their shoes in little plastic baggies. Its effect is cumulative, just the repeating of the gesture over and over it becomes ritualistic in its own right, but also operates in the interstices whereby two cultures interface with each other but not in a waythat is abt engaging with each other, more abt watching each other, reducing and fetishising. I felt woozy and strange after watching it.

Stephen Gunning - Journeyman @ Mother's tankstation, exhibition runs until 13 Feb, 2010 4-6pm daily.

G126 @ RHA

i guess its fair to say that g126 have an "aesthetic." Like its not somewhere you take your friends who don't "get" "art" or "whatever." They show a lot of stuff that isn't painting and not really sculpture, but like video, readymades and installation. They like stuff that looks like it was done on an office printer and then pasted to something made out of MDF and packing palletts, you know, kindof austere but trashy and pretentious/unpretentious.

This show was good but seemed small? I assume there are loads of members and I woulda liked to have seen something more inclusive, like even someone as dumb abt local art as me recognised most of the names. And despite that it was patchy, Kevin Mooney's paintings are way better than they seem in jpeg form, twitchy and abrupt but with sudden passages of bravura, kinetic brushwork, they seem to play off competing senses of space (surface design v. photographic pictorial space)

Also Fiona Chambers cross-stich sets of kitch jpegs was pretty inspired in its decision not to actually make the things up, but to display them as little kits for sale (I couldn't be sure if they were in fact for sale for €25 each, I prolly woulda bought one if they were, btw my email is in the sidebar fyi) and it was clever about the distinction between handmade and electronic and the internet as a folk-art museum which was surprising bc ud think that subject ran out of milage circa 2004 at the latest.

Dominic Thorpe reminded me of Glenn Ligon via bad acid and was probably the thing I enjoyed the most out of this show even though in some ways it was the same kind of lame joke that Breda Lynch and Padraig Robinson were tryna pull, (like i actually couldnt believe that coco-pop hirst steez wtf u guys)

MARK GARRY @ KERLIN

theres a moment in this exhibition where you look up @ "Folds", an installation made from a rainbow of sewing-thread strung from one-wall to another, and the thing has disappeared, what you see is just the soft radiation of colour, like the little rainbows you see when someone waters the lawn in summer. Its kindof amazing, and even though the poetry of it feels a little cheap, its sort of the point.

I mean i was rollin my damn eyes when I saw that the little feather palm tree (garishly yellow!) was called "to say a psalm for now" i mean lol its great, like a joke your dad would tell. But when you see it from across the room it leaves a reflected yellow circle on the wall.

Anyway pretty good, its got a bit of Jessica Stockholder abt it, I mean the overall aesthetic is pretty Euro Two but there are moments when something else bubbles up and punctures that (felt like the balsa-wood flowers were him jamming his tongue way into his cheek tho) but it didn't make me think abt the universe, or anything at all really when I left (also there was like three things that i didn't "get" like at all) but thats just me i guess.

DAMIEN FLOOD @ GREEN ON RED

I love the way this guy paints; it looks fun, like finger painting. but though they are built from slick syrupy skeins of oily paint, the miniature abstractions in this show Counter Earth feel weirdly restrained. Like, he's not just playing with his poo r anything, there's a definite feeling that each painting riffs around some compositional motif so that the general feeling is playful but ordered.

I like the way these paintings feel like abstractions that cohere around some pictorial chassis, like it feels less like there are references to landscapes than certain paintings take on the structures of landscape painting for one example. Its a useful way of thinking abt the historicity of painting in a way that still facilitates a kind of lightness of approach, like you can just use all these phrasings without having to necc get all referential or reverential about them.

A couple of paintings just as you enter the main gallery space seem like pretty prime examples of this. (They immediately put me in mind of Thomas Nozkowski, a painter whose work pitches itself in a register somewhere between optical and process based and who seems a likely influence esp in the acidic greens and lurid reds that both use.). Both paintings employ the same basic colour pallette, a narrow band of multicoloured lozenges stutter accross the picture plane, but while one is bare the other is fractured. both appear to be based on a row of books on a shelf, but i held off saying this because it feels like they were arrived at instead of the image being "based on" them.

4get abt that tho for a second bc thats just really a bone im tryin to pick with the universe maybe.

on that note this video of thomas nozkowski talking abt his process is pretty next level as far as painters being smart and bs free abt their studio process etc. recommended.

EIMEAR TWOMEY @ G126

supreme meta-text

in theory fucking with the frame, breaking the 4th wall, i am generally down with this kind of behaviour guys. This I was only semi-okay with though.

Eimear Twomey is a recent graduate and this was an impressive show for a young artist definitely. More literate and funnier than you would find in your average degree show at least. this chick is hella neurotic abt stories, or how we tell them or how we become trapped in them. The focal point is a little collection of playbooks. each bypasses the actual drama that the title introduces and has the characters talking abt the notion of appearing in a play that is abt themselves. Its weird, considering the rhizoming meta-textuality of everything now, that it felt kinda, i dunno novel maybe. Also, i mean its pretty funny.

There is almost no colour in this exhibition btw. its all b+w and maybe that's why it seems so stark, paranoid and bleak. Even the voices in the sound piece seem like black on white, spouting ridiculous/boring agony aunt shit. It was kindof the perfect illustration of why the show isn't quite as good as those books: not as original, or didn't give itself enough space to be original ("dear ---- " is way too constraining a cliche to be inventive within imo) and, to be honest, when she uses other ppl in her work, the quality of the acting lets her down emphasizing rather than smoothing over any awkwardness in the script (the guy in the videos looks really uncomfortable to be there). like this might be "part of the point" but it still isn't "convincing."

but man maybe im just way too bogged down in the painting game atm not 2 be able to see the wood for the trees with stuff like this, it makes me curious as to how ppl like this work in the studio all of a sudden. i mean, its pretty hardcore conceptual art, really existing outside of objects in a fairly convincing way.

JAMES CASTLE @ DOUGLAS HYDE

Could this guy write? I thought he couldn't, well there's a lot of writing in this show, but its still difficult to know because what is there is either copied from logotypes or weird letter-ish symbols, its kinda great because it shows how biographical detail becomes helpful in decoding how this guy's work uh worked and how it becomes weirdly more expansive than private through the pile up of these weird codings. For that to work tho u do need to kno a little abt how this guy. He was deaf and he had v. little schooling and almost never left Idaho I think. He never learned to read or write or speak and the weird scraps of drawings in this show are a selection of the one method he had of communicating with the world.

Okay so I wasn't buying that line first, becoz the first thing u c r all these family portrait things only with weird box ppl and its a bit, well, this kinda "ppl r strange 2 me" narrative is exactly what puts most ppl off abt "outsider art" isn't it? turning mental patients, hillbillies and chimpanzees into weird cyphers and mouthpieces of our id r whatever, u kno, the standard this-is-offensive line. But they're just one thing and the rest of the exhibition is great in a way that kinda dismantles that early criticism which is really just caffeine+opinions lets be honest here.

I'm not gonna launch into some lengthy exposition of why i fucking love writing-in-painting lately, but that reciprocation and disconnection between two different functions of markmaking is really interesting to me at the moment so it was definitely the strategy that led me into this and not just jumping on some reactionary stance just for the sake of it. But at the same time its not really something I can talk abt right now in shortform because I'm digesting my thots on this in a big way in larger form atm so I'm just gonna leave it for now and you're gonna have to take it from me that there is something going on here that is clever and knowing, and its abt an interest in language that is complex and fragmentary and ambivalent and that the two drawings of letters are stuttering and nicely played but work in a stratum just beneath words so you should really just see them tbh.

Highlight of the show though are these really great little landscapes, done i suppose in the artist's spit 'n' ashes ink. Nearly all of the same small-town backyard setting they walk a thin line between claustrophobic n intimite but moreso are really fascinating just for their dense compositions, the way eaves of rooftops sing with telephone wires from and lines that lock and groove out from each other in a way that is both incredibly fluent and anxiously groping. Also the dense tangles of patchy brushland, the nervous neatness of well kept lawns, everything seems expressive in its own silence. I nearly forgot to mention the interiors that seem incredibly descriptive of watery light filling a room from a few feet away, but up close are nearly crude and childish, this is pretty much the weird condition of this whole show tho.

Also shit like drawing on crappy old scraps of paper will get u very far in my books and this had really cool frames that hooked on at the sides in this weird way and were all cool and super minimalist in this great way when contrasted with the delicacy of the falling-apart, yellowing notepaper and scraps of things that Castle used for supports including these genuinely fucking weird doll things that I wanna see again b4 i die! I hope I get to go back in time for the Mike Nelson thing anyway, I'm perennially semi curious abt him u kno.

random dublin stuff

Group show of kevin kavanagh was good, def worth it to see the Mark Swords paintings, the one called quilt made me crack up! Also, I had never heard of Margaret Corcoran before, one of hers was rubbish, the other great. I can't find the list of works so I can't remember which was which, but it was the smaller of the two, with a plaque-like shiny surface.

I would have more for this post, but once again pallas projects and mothers tankstation weren't open. Fair enough MT are showing a film twice a day so they're only open for showings, I should have checked it out, but I won't bother going back to Pallace Projects because I feel like a right dick waiting outside to be let in and then realising nobody's coming, again. its not exactly conveniently located.

Also, I'm gonna blog someday soon about my undying love for Agnes Martin, and my plans for a pilgrimage to her life that i'm paying for one cappuccino at a time working in a coffee shop, but I just wanna mention the Ellsworth Kelly - Agnes Martin - Seán Shanahan trio of paintings that are part of the current display of the permanent collection at Hugh Lane. I fucking amazing treat for me. It was a pretty great day all in all as I did manage to see the paintings in the Ross O'Donnell show I had to miss at Cross Gallery, they were stacked in the downstairs gallery and I had a rummage, I know I prolly shouldn't have but its not like they're old masters and it was totally worth it.

ALICE MAHER @ GREEN ON RED

Ok I figure ur supposed to have an opinion on this exhibition. First time I've ever seen another person in this gallery while I was there, and there was like six. And its been on a while. tbh I never really got what was supposed to make this chick any better than the girls I used to see copping her moves at art-school and I don't know if this show is gonna be the one to change my mind.

First off this seemed okay. There were framed prints made from the animations which comprise the main bulk of the exhibition. I wondered about how they left in the rubbed out bits somehow. I wish I knew more abt printmaking processes sometimes.

So Alice Maher's schtick is like this queasy dissection of the body and she's obsessed with hair, but beyond that, I really didn't know what I was meant to extrapolate from this exhibition. When William Kentridge does the one page animation thing, its abt histories that can't be erased maybe, when Maher does it she just seems to be exploiting its inherent visual seductiveness. Bodies morph, mutate, merge and disolve, turning into bees and balls of hair and the sound is close mic-ed and uncomfortable in its detail. There's a level of skill in the drawing (even if her faces are a bit awkward and junior-cert-ey at times) but there's not a whole lot of um variation in how she makes the mutations happen. Like, you won't be mad at yourself for trekking out to see this, but I doubt you'll be that into it either, but then what do I know.

ISABEL NOLAN @ KERLIN GALLERY

You know those shops that sell vaguely modernist home decor art? You know, half assed appropriations of Abstract Expressionism only in shades that will match your new couch. Well that's what this exhibition kinda reminded me of. I don't mind that, in fact I think its kinda funny! It's the reverse of making paintings that look like dulux color cards, fine art refiltering itself thru its own appropriation by um Ikea maybe. Nolan gives you stacks of Tuttle-octagons, watercolours of Degas sculptures and Munch sunsets. Wished there was more focus on painting, the sculptures do have a roughly hewn precision and a funky, eclectic use of materials, but Nolan does have nice, insouciant touch and her bright primaries are strained and stretched at the edges in a way that sets up its own tensions, distinct from the appropriated compositions. Also, embroidery tables? Give me a break, shit's been done really.

ross mc donnell

I don't really know what Cros Gallery's deal is. They've had a couple of kickass shows lately mixed with a few mediocre ones. This one looks fucking great, wish it was on for more than 18 days because I might not get to actually see it. (I had plans to make it up next thursday, but it looks like that might not happen now, hmmm). Yeah, work and etc. Anyway, I feel like I should give this a mention anyway because at least from the jpegs this looks great. Messy and funny and with weird colours, dude streaks thick lines over anemic smears of paint, parts are collaged, pieces of imagery are reconfigured and put back together in ways that seem askew and lackadaisical. I like the slacker aesthetic, but it also seems like it masks something more methodical that I can't really put my finger on (duh, was hoping seeing them in the flesh would give me a clue!)

Anyway, its nice to see that this kind of abstraction is being done by younger painters, it feels like it has definite roots in 70's abstract painting, but thankfully doesn't feel like it needs to update the politics of that era, instead the introductions of imagery on the periphery of the optical register feels like a shrug in the direction of having something to look at, I like that, these are obviously abstract paintings, but they kinda flirt around with imagery and pictorial space in an easy-going and charming way. What I mean to say is its not exactly "the message" or whatever that is so appealing, but the tone of voice. You get the feeling you could hang out with this guy.



Over washed Nirvana T-Shirt translates faded worn cotton and that lame t-shirt everyone had in school (I fucking love nirvana but that t-shirt is stupid imo) you know, the one with the crooked smile, and hastily reassembles it as scribbled-in patches of greenish black oil paint, the outlines are the pinkish underpainting smeared up onto the top surface of the paint. A big theme is maybe a tension between different pictorial surfaces and redepictions of them, in which case a t-shirt is really, i dunno clever? Would like to see as well how these play out with the relationships between different layers of paint, large parts seem like they operate more in terms of obscuring what's beneath them than projecting outwards which is a great idea maybe, because the markmaking itself seems pretty bold but the emphasis is inward. Anyway its hard to know just from some jpegs so you should check it out urself and let me know if i'm onto something haha.

GALLERY BEAT!

Hahahahahahaha! I would love to have the balls/complete lack of self-consciousness to do shit like this, well maybe not really. This is kinda the tone I'm going for in this blog by the way, just a blog that is about actually going to shows and having a reaction and thinking about that a little, no holy mountain bs here ppl!

http://gallerybeat.net/

The video of Stephen Irwin's opening is getting a lot of internet buzz, largely due to the fact that Paul H-O calls Cathy Lebowitz, Cindy (dude dated Cindy Sherman for like a long time and made that movie that u prolly haven't seen either) and then gets her to describe some sexually [im/ex]plicit imagery.

galerie graesslin

there's something really sad and camp and damaged about Stefan Muller, not sure abt these compared to his Christian Nagel show last year which had glitter and bleach and markers. I have a feeling that all of his work is a lot more detailed and beautiful in real life than these jpegs will let u know, someone who I hope I see a show by pretty soon.

this was orig. a post about stefan muller but holy shit has this gallery got one hell of a roster! also never seen these Imi Knoebel's before and I'm freaking out a little at them, look at this for a pallette!

Also, on top of that their showing Gunther Forg who was the one glowing beacon of awesomeness amid the Frieze fair when I went in 2008 (not a mistake I will make again btw), turns out I fucking hate art fairs btw.

i have a major boner for

Stephen Westfall's giddy formalism. Fucking chevrons man. One of those painters whose work is so simple and formalist and weirdly original, ingeniously simple formal games that surely someone must have thought of before but you just can't place.

NOUGHTIES BUT NICE @ LCGA

This was obviously never gonna really work as a broad survey of contemporary Irish art, but seriously get one clue Limerick City Gallery. Even the Seán Lynch was pretty rubbish. Amanda Coogan should be banned from inflicting her rubbish overly literal performance videos on the world in my opinion and also since when is over the hill nearly ran John Shinnors an emerging voice? Limerick City Gallery reeks of the kind of cronyism that all the american painter blogs are crucifying NY's New Museum for at the moment. Good thing this thing is almost over so you can miss it.

Update.

This has been extended until 20th December, so you have another month to be excited by irish art NOW.

A few other things from Dublin

What is the deal with the Cross Gallery, they always have semi-cool stuff downstairs and boring mom-art upstairs, well the two times I've been there. I think downstairs might be called "nag" and be their emerging art things maybe. Anyway, downstairs is worth a look, but I'm too lazy to go into it right now, long day, etc.

Are Monster truck ever open?

I liked the thing I saw in green on red, there was one drawing done by scratching out a mirror and another done by printing on the back of reflective Glass, space used really nicely to show big silvery video, drawings were pretty great. This was it btw.

Went to the Munch exhibition in the National Gallery. Didn't think I was a huge fan, but holy shit could he draw!

Kathy Predergast in the Kerlin was a bit disappointing, was a bit like a third year crit, esp. with douchebaggy NCAD seminar taking place there. Reminded me why I was so glad to finish art school haha. Lots of stuff with inked out maps, not as compelling as here map drawings and seemed a bit tossed off to be honest.

I liked the thing that was about sports maybe in the RHA with the big sculpture, some of the paintings were really stunning and the whole thing had a snottiness about it that in a weird way reminded me of Infinite Jest (which I will one day finish I swear). Hadn't a clue what it was about though.

I knew Mother's Tankstation was gonna be closed but I still checked cos I am a loser like that. Love that place, hope I catch the next thing that opens.

That's pretty much all I can remember, but I have a feeling I'm forgetting some stuff.