As opposed to landing somewhere in between, it embodies all of these characteristics at once, and manages to do in a way that feels reasonable despite the absurdity to some of his pictures. Referencing fashion magazines as much as they do Irish mythology, each work harbours a hidden narrative that changes from viewer to viewer.
We attended the opening of his new show, Never Odd or Even, on 11 April and asked the audience what’s your hot take?
HOT TAKE 1: I want to say it’s a lighthearted look at the Renaissance, because there’s something more strange going on. It’s certainly uncanny, but feels more like recognition of something you may not have ever seen, yet feel like you are seeing again after a long time.
HOT TAKE 2: It’s awesome. It looks fuckin real. I wouldn’t normally go for this kind of style, like classical realism. You have to appreciate it technically, and how skilled the artist is. Technically, it’s amazing, even though it’s not the sort of thing I would go to myself.
HOT TAKE 3: Wicked, really good. It’s more playful than serious. I think because of the mirroring it’s got an added element which makes it more modern. Looking at the portrait and the swans, you feel like you’re seeing something else inside of something so recognisable.
HOT TAKE 4: I’m slightly perplexed, which I’m enjoying. Usually I can read the sort of symbolism or signifiers or whatever, and whether I read them right or not I come up with my own thing, but with this I’m confused and I enjoy that.
Usually I don’t feel like I can say anything until I have found the literature, and I haven’t read it. If there is anything to read I’m going to read it, but for now I’m just in it.
HOT TAKE 5: It’s something that seems so recognisable and familiar but at the same time completely not at all, and kind of dreamlike. But whatever the unknown agent is feels positive, not malevolent at all. There’s something that feels like, I know this, I have seen this before, but at the same time also very new.
HOT TAKE 6: I think it’s outstanding. I loved the floral and the cyclops. I like to get up close and kind of see how it was done; the construction of it. When you get up close you can start to feel how it has been made. I think the scale really does something for that as well.
For instance on the large portraits, because there’s not so much detail, when you get up close they become this kind of slightly more kind of blurry, amorphous…field. It’s interesting coming back and then getting up close again and seeing that they’re not hugely detailed. There’s big areas of this kind of constant colour transition but not anything real details if you know what I mean. Yeah, I really like that.
HOT TAKE 7: I know that work of the artist already, so my first impression was “new stuff”. My favourite was probably the duo heads. You can see the baroque but you can also see the concept in equal weighting.
HOT TAKE 8: There’s a painting over there that reminds me of Magritte, but why it does is not obvious to me. It’s got some kind of the same essence. The wit maybe – something that’s not just visual.
HOT TAKE 9: It’s interesting how he has taken the idea of palindromes to Dutch Masters. I thought initially it was a little…too shiny, but it’s actually beautiful. Especially when you go close. I like the work. I would definitely buy one if I had any money.
HOT TAKE 10: I think there’s quite a mood of reflection – the depth of the reproduction and the mirroring like, makes me look harder at it. It could have been done much easier in a different way, but there’s something about the meditation of it that’s very moving.
HOT TAKE 11: I just knew I liked them right away, even though I didn’t know why. It was like an instant appeal and then I just kept being pleasantly surprised.
HOT TAKE 12: This is beautiful, and inviting. Sometimes I actually feel kind of repelled by art, but this draws me in and makes me feel like I want to stay.
HOT TAKE 13: It’s just good, you know. It’s just good.
HOT TAKE 14: We were really just gravitated to it, and particularly the ones that had fewer elements to them. Like just wanted to be in the presence of it, kind of like it’s a person.
HOT TAKE 15: The more I look at it the more I like about it. I love how this portrait cuts off at this awkward eye crease corner location, like it’s such an awkward place on the body, doesn’t really have a name, and it makes me think, what even is that, and that makes me realise how arbitrary any name for any other location on the body is – like it’s all just one continuous body. Who’s to say where it starts and stops if it’s all contained within the same body?
HOT TAKE 16: The thing about doing a pastiche of something – like if you’re doing a Dutch Masters – is then you’re going to be compared to it. Like it’s going to be evaluated against Dutch Masters, whereas that one [cyclops portrait] is sufficiently different to not land you in that space.
It’s a lot to be up against, because inevitably if you’re compared to the Dutch Masters you’re going to come up short. So I feel like it has been diverted enough to really be something else.
HOT TAKE 17: I noticed that the scale of the piece of paper this hand is holding is very similar to an iPhone, or a smart phone. It’s not really as big as a regular piece of paper. I don’t know if I’m reading into it too much, but it makes me think about the technological scale and the contemporariness of it.
We can very easily do something like this with our phones now, or AI, so there’s something about the way of seeing has become quite handheld.
On view through 18 May, 2024 at Almine Rech London
Broadbent House, Grosvenor Hill
London, W1K 3JH
more info here
