In the art of Sean Scully–widely acknowledged as among the most influential proponents of abstract painting–particular attention has often been paid to the potential significance both literal and metaphorical of the square. Since the earliest stages of Scully's work, and across a wide array of paintings, drawings and sculptures, squares have appeared both as stable, balanced structures and spaces of open-ended possibility.
Spanning over 50 years, this exhibition brings together 100 works; oil paintings, watercolours, drawings, sculpture, writings and prints from 1968 to now focusing on the role of the square in Sean Scully's singular career. This selection of work ranges between the artist's 1970s measured grid paintings, created with tape and paint, to the instantly recognisable, emotion-rich geometry of his 'Wall of Light' paintings and the recent 'Dark Window' series, made during lockdown and unveiled in the New York Times in April 2020.
SQUARE also includes a new series of prints of drawings made with the artist's finger on an iPhone screen. These playful and expressive drawings are teeming with life and energy, expressing the haptic and creative potential of the screen. A celebration of tactility in an age of immateriality, they carve out a space for drawing and mark-making in the age of the smartphone while reconsidering the legacy of minimalism and abstraction in the 21st Century.
A fully-illustrated catalogue with a text by Sean Rainbird, Director of the National Gallery of Ireland, and a foreword by critic and lecturer Declan Long, will be published on the occasion of the exhibition.
Press release courtesy Kerlin Gallery.
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