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Sean Scully

SEAN SCULLY

SQUARE Kerlin Gallery 17 May–25 June 2022 Dublin
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Press Release

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.

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About the Artist

Sean Scully is considered to be one of the world’s leading abstract painters. Born in Dublin and raised in London, he now lives between New York and Germany. Appropriately, therefore, Scully’s art is thoroughly international in perspective, drawing on the diverse historical and cultural influences of places that, at different times, have been profoundly important to him. He has taken inspiration from many cherished, varied elements of European culture (ranging from the harmonic ideals of ancient Greek architecture to the vernacular design of stone walls in rural Ireland) but he has also successfully responded to—and built on—the legacy of abstraction in the United States. Scully’s commanding, internationally recognisable style of abstract art—based on repeating and steadily adapting arrangements of discretely nuanced blocks of colour—combines considerable painterly drama with great visual delicacy. It is an art of tremendous vigour: Scully is a forceful, physical artist, who creates intentionally monumental spaces. But it is also an art of acute concentration and care: his work involves an ongoing negotiation between the monumental and the intimate.

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Also Exhibiting at Kerlin Gallery

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Siobhán Hapaska Kerlin Gallery 4 June–11 July 2026 Dublin
About the Gallery

Kerlin Gallery was founded in Dublin in 1988. It has built an international reputation for its dedicated, meaningful representation of leading contemporary artists through its exhibition, publishing and art fair programmes. Its current site was designed by the minimalist architect John Pawson in 1994 and offers 3,600 square feet of exhibition space over two floors in the heart of Dublin City Centre.

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Address
Anne's Lane
South Anne Street
Dublin
Ireland
Opening Hours
Tuesday – Friday, 10am – 5:30pm
Saturday, 11am – 4:30pm
(1)
Dublin Anne's Lane, South Anne Street
Kerlin Gallery contemporary art gallery in Dublin Ireland
Kerlin Gallery
Anne's Lane, South Anne Street, Dublin, Ireland
+35 316 709 093
http://www.kerlin.ie

Opening hours
Tuesday – Friday, 10am – 5:30pm
Saturday, 11am – 4:30pm
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