exhibition

HUGH McCARTHY 'Gasoline Rainbow'

15.Feb.09
Thursday-Sunday 12-6 or by appointment

Studio 1.1
57a Redchurch St
London E2 7DJ
07952 986 696
studio1-1.gallery@virgin.net
www.studio1-1.co.uk
Tube Liverpool Street, Old Street, Shoreditch / Hoxton

New paintings from the young Irish artist. Abstract systems on the point of collapse. Self-contradictory sources from computer graphics to art history re-configured with a dynamic and self-consciously decorative impulse. As though obeying multiple instruction manuals, the paintings emerge from an implied order into a more happenstance reality. Our pleasure is imperilled. With impatience and restless invention McCarthy meshes signs and symbols from the man-made world; mapping new contours and slippery topographies in the hope of finding where we are.

Moving from landscape to abstraction with energetic colour, across distorted grids and sophisticated line drawings, juxtaposing biomorphic and mechanical forms, masculine and feminine elements; he establishes a continuous and unsettling tension throughout.

These new works contain a complex array of signs, symbols, colours, and shapes, a celebration of freedom - aesthetic, commercial, sexual or otherwise. His paintings represent not only the sleek image of contemporary life but also the very spirit of post-modern capitalism. Bright and artificial, the convergence reads like a textbook illustration of the Anxiety of Influence: these impossible paths weaving together past and future present simultaneously a retailer's utopian vision and, to the critic of consumer culture, a dystopian nightmare. His vision is celebratory and appalling in equal measure.

News / reviews The Sawdust Review: Hugh McCarthy at studio1.1, commentart.com, 26.Feb.09