exhibition

Ryan McLaughlin - Finley Park -

Ryan McLaughlin

29.Nov.07 - 05.Jan.08
Tue-Sat 10-6

Alexandre Pollazzon Ltd
11 Howland St
London W1T 4BU
020 7436 9824
info@alex-pollazzon.com
www.alex-pollazzon.com
Tube Goodge St, Tottenham Ct Rd, Bloomsbury / Soho

Alexandre Pollazzon Ltd. is pleased to present the London solo debut exhibition by American painter Ryan McLaughlin.

McLaughlin's paintings offer quixotic examinations of a variety of sources, including art history, modern medicine, lazy botany, anachronism and aeronautics. Within each painting, specific facts and fabrications, both public and private, are merged into hermetic scenarios.

At Alexandre Pollazzon Ltd., the exhibition consists of new paintings that focus mainly on professional sports. The topic's lack of humour and ambiguity serves as a departure point for McLaughlin; sport is a closed, necessarily rule-based system that is in direct opposition to the nebulous qualities of painting.

This dichotomy seeds McLaughlin's introduction of un-contextualized props and obscure readings of sport that result in paintings that defy clear interpretation. Aligned with his approach, the title of the show takes its name from a mispronunciation of Boston's famed baseball stadium, Fenway Park.

Using a refined palette and soft spotlighting, McLaughlin's modestly -scaled figurative works recall Old World painting while managing to keep a gruff and considerate distance from it. The reassuring and sympathetic impracticality of his constructions distinguish his preference for propositions both grandly futile and quietly noble.