Kevin Kavanagh, Chancery Lane, Dublin Tues-Fri 10.30am-5.30pm, Sat 11am-5pm Until Jun 25 kevinkavanaghgallery.ie 01-4759514
Mark McGreevy featured prominently in the outstanding The Fold (A Paintings Show) at Carlow’s Visual Centre for Contemporary Art recently. Born in Northern Ireland, he studied in Belfast and has, since the latter half of the 1990s, built up a reputation as a resourceful, innovative painter.
McGreevy has been particularly interested in devising a painterly language that accommodates the multiple, overlapping and often fragmented nature of contemporary life and culture. Rather than simply focusing on imagery per se, he sets out to convey a sense of being caught in the midst of myriad narratives – personal, historical, high and pop cultural and so on – each insisting on their own primacy. The result is the “collapse” of any initial, coherent image and the emergence of “a fractured, absurdist narrative that opens itself to randomness, fragmentary consciousness and dissociative disruptions”.
Lest that sound overly theoretical, his paintings are unfailingly brash, colourful, humorous and engaging.
Can’t see that? Catch this
Ross Bleckner Jeff Schneider Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin Until Jun 18 01-8788242