ALEANA EGAN

Kerlin Gallery is pleased to presentRepeating Song, an exhibition of newwork by Aleana Egan. Across paintingand sculptural arrangements, the worksin Repeating Song foster an ambientspace in which to convey sensationsthrough looking. Traces of interactions andexperience are harvested and expressedthrough material objects, colour, and form,presenting a rhythmic installation rootedin the blending of inchoate interior visionsand sources from the world at large.

Painting has a more central presencein Repeating Song than in Egan’sprevious exhibitions at Kerlin. Theartist manipulates colour, surface,texture and density, layering thin,watery washes with thicker daubs.This interplay between lightness anddissolution, solidity and translucencycreates atmospheric shifts that feelopen-ended, or in a state of flux.Primarily in muted tones of blues andbrowns, the paintings are populated by fragmentary shapes that grasp atimages and gesture towards movement,as if retrieving memories imprinteddeep in the psychic landscape.

Similarly, in her sculptural work, Eganmakes enigmatic forms from fabric,wood, pâpier-maché, steel, shadows,and dust. In sound clips, a diptychfabric wall relief acts as a pendant toa wooden chair holding clothes andfabric. In Sky Song, a white handbagin a horseshoe shape joins a group ofmore linear renderings made from cottonand noil (a type of raw silk). Cellulosefibres resembling dust populate a thinmetal perimeter on the ground. Thesematerials are chosen for their porosityand inter-animating qualities, which feelanalogous to a faint absorbed sound.Fabric and textiles take on a renewedresonance in Repeating Song, hintingat a work of memory and an emotionalatmosphere; folded clothes and scrapsof textile evoke absence, but also theessence of a person–an external layerthat can express our interiority.

Aleana Egan (b. Dublin, 1979) hasexhibited at Sculpture Centre, NewYork; Kunsthalle Basel; Kunsthalle zuKiel; Landesmuseum Münster; TheDrawing Room and Jerwood Space,London; Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge;Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh; Leeds ArtGallery; the Douglas Hyde Gallery,Temple Bar Gallery and IMMA, Dublinand the Berlin Biennale. Recent soloexhibitions include Void, Derry (2022);Künstlerhaus Bremen (2021); NICCVitrine Brussels (2020) and Farbvision,Berlin (2019). Recent group exhibitionsinclude Stations, Berlin (2023); CCAAndratx, Mallorca (2022); The Complex,Dublin and The Classical Museum,University College Dublin (both 2021).