Denis Farrell

'Selected Small Works' at Taylor Galleries, Dublin, Ireland

2011-01-29T08:13:00.000-08:00

Recent work by Denis Farrell curated by John Taylor and Patrick Taylor. The exhibition of selected small work showcases the artist's primary influence - the grid - as the underlying structure from which each of these paintings in oil and watercolour stems from. Executed in dense and meticulous layers over more vibrant, often contrasting colours, his paintings are richly tactile colour-noncolour explorations of rhythmic composition and sense-repetition.

18 January until 5 February, 2011

Taylor Galleries

16 Kildare Street

Dublin 2

2010-09-27T03:23:00.000-07:00

ERIC GELBER, assistant editor at artcritical.com, is an artist and critic.
He also contributes to Sculpture, Artnet, New York Sun and other publications. For a complete list of Eric Gelber's contributions to artcritical.com click here http://www.artcritical.com/author/eric-gelber

Denis Farrell Essay by Eric Gelber
(for forthcoming book publication)
Paintings 1987-2004

Denis Farrell uses the grid format to focus on what he considers to be essential to the act of painting. He uses the grid to remove all traces of anthropomorphism from the composition. He systematically applies an evenly sized brushstroke to each component of the grid. His grid paintings are filled with mysterious undertones, colors beneath colors mesh with one another and remain transformative color sensations rather than settled tonal values. The grid paintings also generate wonderful overtones, “the color of the light reflected,” off the surfaces of these densely painted metaphors for windows/mirrors. We scan the surfaces of the shallow often textured grids and Farrell counteracts our urge to look into the paintings. This firmly anchors the grid paintings in the material world while at the same time, the coloration suggests the ethereal colors we see when our eyes are closed, those dense flickering walls of color that palpate to the rhythm of the blood coursing through our veins.

Color and space have always been Farrell’s main concerns. “Geometry frees up your imagination.” Inspired by Greek tesserae, the geometric designs found on Greek tiles he studied at the Metropolitan Museum of Art while he lived in New York, Farrell purged his painting of figuration eventually and started to compose grids out of densely layered colors, which bring to mind the various phases of sunrise and sunset and the flora and fauna that surround the artist in his idyllic home on the side of a mountain in Ireland. Farrell relies on the grid form and repetitive application of the pigment to the canvas, to get at what he is most interested in, the drama and psychological complexity found within large fields of modulated color and the weird spaces they suggest. “The grid is composed of one inch squares which are filled with four strokes of color (with a number one short flat brush) until the surface is covered.” By removing figuration from the work, abstract expressionist line and brushwork, and organic abstraction, Farrell’s grid paintings become windows and mirrors. They are redolent of the coloration of the organic world, but they are weirdly other, symbolic of complex subjective states of mind. The grid paintings eliminate the kind of formal struggle we find in abundance in Farrell’s non-grid paintings.

In his early work, done during and immediately following graduate school and modified up until 2004, Farrell turned to modernist geometric-organic abstraction and the urban environment for a way into the process. Before he eliminated spontaneously drawn linear marks from his work Farrell struggled to create a personalized space using the expressive power of complimentary colors. He followed in the modernist tradition of creating otherworldly yet poetically real space using different hues of complimentary colors, and playing line off of modulated patches of color.

While he finished his formal education at the New York Studio School (1989-90) and the Yale University School of Art (1991-93), Denis Farrell searched for an artistic identity, a painterly idiom that was relevant to the times and unencumbered by things he felt were extraneous to the act of painting. Farrell was walking the streets, taking in the ruins of late 1980s New York City, and absorbing the art in all the major cultural institutions and network of galleries. Farrell states that he studied the work of British born painter Frank Auerbach, among others. Auerbach’s crusty swirl of lines and aggressively modulated thick areas of color, especially his paintings of urban structures, come to mind when viewing some of Farrell’s non-grid paintings done from 1987-2004. However, Farrell was not interested in verisimilitude, and his bold use of unmixed primary colors relate his non-grid work more to the geometric abstractions of Hans Hoffmann than to the English painter.

These paintings, experimental byproducts of Farrell’s burgeoning talent, personify the malleability and imaginative potential of geometric forms. The predominant forms in these works are rectangles, triangles, ovoids, organic pod shapes, and free floating and suggestive lines, which hint at such forms as doorways, toppled buildings, construction scaffolding, horizon lines, and aggressive beams of energy. These early paintings are an imaginative and highly charged struggle between horizontal and vertical linear forces. The lines are vehicles for the colors they are painted with. Urban detritus comes to mind when one stares at these heroic struggles for a state of equilibrium between color and line. These paintings have a snap and punch because this balance is never achieved, and the sometimes acidic or perhaps radioactive combination of colors maintains the life force of the work.

A few of these early non-grid paintings are isolated organic blob shapes floating in aqueous or skyey fields of color. The artist did these after he left the urban environment and became immersed in a lush rural setting. The dramatic change of environment left an indelible mark on Farrell’s work. The urban environment inspired him to create compositions filled with an anarchic linear and tonal energy, which keep the viewer’s eyes moving over the surfaces of the paintings in search of an elusive equilibrium. The more formally ordered organic abstractions are theatrical in the sense that isolated forms interact with one another in a more or less clearly delineated space. There are subtle ambiguities in these color fields but they do not disrupt the outlines of the abstract entities.

In the painting Material Image a large irregular rectangular patch of deep orange with white specks hovering across its surface is placed over a large field of silvery blue. Deep red underpainting is still visible beneath the field of blue. Orange specks and dashes, slashes of pale green, red, yellow, mauve, and darker and lighter blue take up the foreground of the bottom and right side of the canvas. Like much of the pre-grid work this painting displays a strong connection to drawing. The linear elements, the drawn shapes, remind us of buildings and fire escapes, but Farrell always remains steadfastly abstract. He has created an agitated surface where complementary colors communicate with one another, and pigments straight out of the tube are juxtaposed with blended mid-tones. Farrell retains a sense of two-dimensionality in the work. The background silver blue, which predominates the composition, is modulated: scratches and creases are pressed into or sliced into it, drips of orange puncture the space it suggests, and the red underpainting quietly hums through its surface. Our eyes are never allowed to sink too far into this imaginative space. Horizontally oriented lines and shapes vie with vertically oriented lines and shapes. Every red, blue, and violet has a green, orange, and yellow counterpart, but nothing perfectly matches up. Every mark is unique. Because these complementary colors aren’t perfectly balanced within the composition some paint strokes, blobs, specks, splashes or smears of color are transient, they reverberate powerfully but also get subsumed into the overall abstract pattern of the work.

The painting Double Genre is less chaotic and more figurative. There is an erect vertically oriented form containing wildly converging lines and dollops of pure and mixed pigment. This shape consists of pale green lines and dashes which resemble a vase or utility pole, a cluster of red daubs of paint above it which form into an inverted triangle, and multiple triangles and right angles in yellow, orange, light brown, and sky blue. By weaving the same light blue that appears in the background into this complex mass, Farrell flattens out space, or makes it difficult to determine what is in front of what. The ambiguity of the spatial relationships between different colors is an important element of Farrell’s later grid paintings. This aggressively erect form is bracketed on the right by a large L-shaped area of reddish purple, which traces the shape of the edge of the canvas. Again the background consists of a thick gray blue with a portal/window like rectangle of lighter sky blue taking up the left side of it. Along the bottom left edge of the canvas there is a shape that resembles the top a skyscraper as seen from below. There is a long gray bar placed behind this shape and another L-shaped form dangles from the top of the gray bar. Along the upper left edge of the picture there is a thick stroke of bright orange paint that communicates with the other slashes of bright orange paint that are placed across the expanse of blue on the other side of the composition. These architectural fragments express the sense of being engulfed or immersed that a walker in the streets of New York City would feel as they look up at the looming verticals.

The painting Red suggests a symbolic interior space with metaphysical implications. The lower third of the painting, multi-colored crisscrossed stripes, acts as a floor in the “room,” and there is a doorway form that merges with the left edge of the canvas. A large field of subtly accented bright, hot red orange takes up two thirds of the painting. A ghostly tilted triangular form is placed in the center of the composition, and there is a red colored cornice like shape resting on it, which is delineated by a faint blue outline. There is a strategically placed blue dot in the field of crusty bright orange in the upper right corner of the painting, and this mighty speck of paint punctures and simultaneously hovers above the orange. As we study the edges of the left side of the painting we realize that beneath the thick orange paint there is a coat of opaque blue. By painting over the blue with a keyed up version of its compliment, and leaving thin traces of the underpainting along the entire ragged left edge of the canvas, the dominant orange field becomes agitated, its strength through majority rule is undermined. This painting is loud and a high level of abstraction is maintained. Farrell’s use of the simple rectangle and triangle leads to complex associations and rich metaphors. In this painting we also see how Farrell plays brushstroke off of daub of paint and smear of paint done with a palette knife. He generates a variety of surface textures by contrasting different modes of paint application and thickening the paint surface through overlap and layering, and this makes the physicality of the canvas palpable.

Fullness of Presence is a tour de force, a gallant struggle to manufacture a complex image without using color descriptively. This wild mesh of lines, triangles, hatchings, and dots of paint is filled with glowing reds and oranges. Yellow ochre, alizarin crimson, dirtied yellows, pale greens, and cobalt blues, hold together agitated mark making, and murky, aqueous triangular portals, suggestive of great mysterious depths. Rather than suggesting a three dimensional space through color and line, Farrell is more interested in layering and foregrounding pure color sensations. The tangled web of diverging and converging lines cancel each other out in the sense that they sate the viewer’s curiosity but never resolve into coherent imagery. Farrell appears to be more interested in the power of juxtaposed colors, the luscious and tactile clump or smear of pigment. The colors are so sensuous and appealing that the lines are little more than a means to an end, a way of putting down color and setting up color relationships, without generating specific imagery that would take away from the expressiveness of the rich colors.

In such paintings as Divergence, Fragment, The Fact of Being Present, and Spectacle Farrell defines a background and foreground plane more clearly. In Fragment two abstract entities are surrounded by an impastoed gray field. Traces of sky blue underpainting emerge mostly along the edges but also in the middle of the painting. Small violet orbs play off of a large smear of bright yellow paint, and a jagged edged block of orange has a crisp thick line of sky blue hugging its entire right edge. These colorful shapes, made up of areas of color rather than individual parts, float in a Miró-esque aqueous and timeless space.

In some of these early works, where there is an emphasis on linear activity, the lines don’t delineate form as much as carry color from one area of the painting to another. That is why the line quality in these early works is thick and pasty. The line does not describe details of form or surface. Lines aggressively bring one color into the territory of another color. Colors clash when lines interact. In the less busy early canvases, Farrell isolates forms more, but the forms are primarily clusters of intense color floating in front of a larger field of complimentary color.

As Rosalind Krauss points out in her seminal essay on grids which first appeared in 1979, “Unlike perspective, the grid does not map the space of a room or a landscape or a group of figures onto the surface of a painting.” Farrell moved away from linear and figural abstractions and began painting his grids so that he could completely remove metaphors for the human body from his work. He realized that even very abstract content would still be read as human figures, familiar structures such as rooms, buildings, and various exterior and interior fixtures, or at the very least symbols for these things. The grid allowed Farrell to introduce a new set of metaphors into his compositions. Following Krauss, Farrell’s grid paintings inspire a centrifugal reading. They appear to be fragments of an infinitely larger fabric of light, energy, and imaginative space. The non-grid paintings that Farrell painted or began to paint before he used the grid format are bold and exploratory. We see Farrell intuitively experimenting with the formal elements of painting in order to discover what is most important to him.

1. ALECTO 1993
2. RED 1990-04
3. FRAGMENT 1990-2004
4. CONTAINER 1993
15. SPECTACLE 1990-2004
17. MYSTIQUE 1990-04
18. ?
19. DISCORD 1990-2004
20. DIVERGENCE 1990-04
26. DOUBLE GENRE 1990-04
27. MATERIAL IMAGE 1990-2004
28. IMPLOSION 1990-2004
29. VILLAGE 1990-2004
30. BROKEN VASE 1993
31. THE FACT OF BEING PRESENT 1990-2004
32. FULLNESS OF PRESENCE 1990-2004

Ireland: In Private Collection

2010-01-29T05:01:00.000-08:00

New York: In Private Collection

2010-01-29T04:44:00.000-08:00

Curriculum Vitae

2010-01-26T13:16:00.000-08:00

EDUCATION
1991-93 Yale University School of Art, Master of Fine Arts (Painting & Printmaking), New Haven, CT, USA (Full Scholarship)
1989-90 New York Studio School of Painting, Drawing and Sculpture, New York City, USA (Fulbright Scholarship)
1981-85 Limerick School of Art and Design, NCEA Diploma in Fine Art Painting (Honours). BA equivalent.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2009 Astonishing Generosity 2006-2008, The Dock Arts Centre, Co. Leitrim, Ireland curated by Caomhin Corrigan, Commissioner for the Irish Pavilion at Venice Biennial 2009
2005 New Paintings 2005, Irish Arts Center, New York City, USA (with catalogue)
New Paintings 2005, Norfolk Community Technical College, Norfolk, CT, USA
2003 Faith: Paintings 2001-2003, national museum exhibition at the Limerick City Gallery of Art, Limerick, Ireland (with catalogue)
Lodestar, Custom House Gallery and Studios, Westport, Ireland (with catalogue)
2001 The Drumshanbo Paintings, Taylor Galleries, Dublin, Ireland
1998 Rocking Horses and Minoan Bulls, Taylor Galleries, Dublin, Ireland
1997 Shields, A.A.A. Gallery, New York City, USA
1996 A.A.A. Gallery, New York City, USA
1993 New Talent Exhibition, Alpha Gallery, Boston, MA, USA
MFA Thesis Exhibition, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
1991 New York Work, Taylor Galleries, Dublin, Ireland
1990 Paintings in Wax, New York Studio School, New York, USA

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2008 Selected Works, Taylor Galleries, Dublin, Ireland
2007 Contemporary Irish Art Exhibition, including works by Brian Maguire, Patrick Pye, Charles Tyrrel, and Dermot Delargy, among others, Norman Villa Gallery, Galway
2007 Howard Scott Gallery, Chelsea, New York
2007 Summer Exhibition, Robert Steele Gallery, Chelsea, New York
2007 Inter-changes, Fulbright 50th Anniversary Touring Exhibition, Farmleigh House, Dublin, Ireland
2005 Delia Cabral Fine Art, Los Angeles, CA, USA
2002 Group Show from Taylor Galleries, Sligo, Ireland
2001 A Sense of Place, Sesson Sevigne, France
2000 45p: Postcards from Ireland, Bingo Hall Gallery, New York, USA
Distractions, exhibitors included Tony O’Malley, Michael Cullen, Dermot Seymore, et al, organised by Creative Encounters and Monaghan County Museum, Ireland
1999 Stuff, Contemporary small works, curated by Ned Davies. Nicholas Davies Gallery, New York, USA
Bingo Hall, invited exhibition of artists associated with Bingo Hall Art Gallery, Norwalk Community Technical College, Norwalk, CT, USA
The Waiting Room, exhibition of works from artists with upcoming solo shows at Bingo Hall, Bingo Hall Art Gallery, New York, USA
1993 Fields of Vision, selected contemporary Irish Art exhibition in honour of Seamus Heaney, Trout Gallery, Dickenson College, Carlisle, PA, USA
1992 The Abstract Irish, B4A Gallery, New York, USA
Right Bank Gallery, Brooklyn, New York, USA
1988 Two person exhibition with Jill Dennis, Taylor Galleries, Dublin, Ireland
1987 3 + 1, Arts Council of Ireland Touring Exhibition, touring through the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland
1985 The New Generation, two person exhibition with Mike Fitzpatrick, Ballycasey House, Shannon, Ireland
1984 This One Left Us Breathless, inaugural exhibition of ‘All + 10 Sorts’, Beltable Arts Centre, Limerick, Ireland

SELECTED PUBLIC & CORPORATE COLLECTIONS
Garda Siochana (Irish Police Force) Headquarters, Phoenix Park, Dublin, Ireland
Office of Public Works, Dublin, Ireland
Limerick City Gallery of Art, Limerick, Ireland
President’s Office, Limerick University, Ireland
Murray O’Laoire Architectural Firm, Limerick, Ireland
Scott Walker and Tallon Architects Dublin Ireland
Monaghan County Museum, Monaghan, Ireland
Guinness Peat Aviation, Shannon, Ireland
K.P.M.G. Accountants, Dublin and Cork, Ireland
Irish Contemporary Art Society, Dublin, Ireland
Irish Ambassador to Britain, London H.E. Daithl O’Ceallaigh
Lloyds Insurance Brokers, London, England
Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, Alexander & Ferdon Law Firm, New York, USA
Readers Digest HQ USA, Pleasantville, NY, USA
Sony Electronics Corporation Headquarters, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Leitrim County Council, Carrick-on-Shannon, County Leitrim, Ireland
Butler Collection, Butler Gallery, Kilkenny, County Kilkenny, Ireland
Hospitality Worldwide, Park Avenue, New York, USA
Watermark Investments, Fifth Avenue, New York, USA

Paintings included in major private collections in Ireland and the USA

AWARDS
2008 Individual Artists bursary, Leitrim County Council in association with Arts Council of Ireland
2007 Arts Council of Ireland, Travel and Mobility award
2005 Cultural Ireland (Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism Grant,) Ireland
1991 Yale University School of Art Full Scholarship
1990 Irish Department of Foreign Affairs Grant, for continued study at the New York Studio School
1989 Fulbright Scholarship, for postgraduate study the United States
1988 Arts Council of Ireland Individual Artist Bursary, for independent work
1987 Arts Council of Ireland Touring Grant, for 3 + 1 Touring Exhibition
1984 University College Cork, First Prize Award, Intervarsity Photographic Exhibition

TEACHING
2005-present Assistant Lecturer in Fine Art, Degree Level Access Programme, Galway-Mayo
Institute of Technology, Castlebar Campus
2000-present Assistant Lecturer in Fine Art, Degree Level Access Programme, Galway-Mayo
Institute of Technology, Cluain Mhuire Campus
1999-present Assistant Lecturer in Fine Art, Full-Time Degree Level Programme, Sligo
Institute of Technology

SEMINARS & RESEARCH
2007 The Arts at Yale, participants included Lisa Yuskavage, Robert Mangold and Sylvia Plymouth Mangold, Brice Marden, and Robert Storr, among others
1990 Invited to attend seminar in Washington, DC, entitled “US Foreign Policy in the Decade of the 1990’s’, which included dinner at the White House and a private evening at the Air and Space Museum; Invited to attend ‘Seminar on International Education’, included in forum with participants from Germany, India, Peru, Ghana and Ireland. Borough of Manhattan Community College
1989 Member of a select committee at the Office of the Consul General of Ireland, New York to promote Irish art and culture in the USA

OTHER
2008 Invited to US Ambassador’s Residence in Dublin, Ireland for the opening reception of ART In Embassies exhibition, featuring American artists Milton Avery, Gifford Beal, Helen Frankenthaler, Eward Hopper, Sol LeWitt and Mark Rothko
2007 Invited to US Ambassador’s Residence in Dublin, Ireland for the unveiling of the Sol LeWitt wall drawing
2005 Constructed state-of-the-art studio to accommodate my art practice
1999 Founder/Director, ‘Bingo Hall Art Gallery’, in Brooklyn, New York, to show the work of emerging artists from around the world
1988 Founding Member, Dun Laoghaire Art Centre and Studios and 5A Centre, with John Renwick.
1987 Appointed Administrator of ‘All + 10 Sorts’, studio co-operative, Limerick, Ireland.
1986/88 Invited to direct Children’s Christmas Art Holiday at the National Gallery of Ireland, and again in 1988 for the 25th anniversary of the event, Dublin.
1984 Founding Member of ‘All + 10 Sorts’, studio co-operative, Limerick, Ireland.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
2008 Chieco Shiona, ‘Denis Farrell’, FlashFilm.com, featured artist including interview, Japan
2006 Eric Gelber, ‘Paintings 1987-2004’, critical text in forthcoming publication on the private collection of Dora Vardis and Frederick Hamilton Salisbury, New York City
2005 Robert C. Morgan, ‘The Intimate Palimpsest’, catalogue essay, New Paintings 2005, Irish Arts Center, New York City; Ciarán Bennett, ‘Material Essence’, catalogue essay, New Paintings 2005, Irish Arts Center, New York City
2003 Brian McAvera, Irish Arts Review, Summer
Ciarán Bennett, ‘Doi Sitep in Leitrim’, catalogue essay, Faith, Limerick City Gallery of Art
2001 Aiden Dunne, ‘Denis Farrell at Taylor Galleries’. Irish Times, February
1998 Brian Fallon, ‘Denis Farrell at Taylor Galleries’, Irish Times, February
Aiden Dunne, ‘Reviews’, Sunday Tribune, February
Annah O’Sullivan, ‘Irish Art in New York’, Circa Art Magazine, Summer
Helena Mulkerns, ‘Painting the Big Apple Green’ (interview), Irish Times, January 6
1993 Peter Lukehart, ‘Selected Works by Contemporary Irish Artists’, catalogue essay, Fields of Vision, exhibition in honour of Seamus Heaney, Trout Gallery, Dickenson College, Carlisle, PA, USA
Nancy Staden, ‘New Talent at Alpha’, The Boston Globe, June 23
‘Dickenson Displays Irish Art Works’, Sunday Patriot News, March 14
1991 Brian Fallon, ‘Denis Farrell at Taylor Galleries’, Irish Times, August
1990 Helena Mulkerns, ‘Irish Art in the Big Apple’, Belfast News, July
‘Denis Farrell Exhibition’, Irish Echo, July
Helena Mulkerns, ‘Working with Wax’, Irish Voice, July
1989 Collette Sheridan, ‘Money on the Wall’, Image magazine, March
1988 Dorothy Walker, Irish Independent, June
Aiden Dunne, ‘Ideal Forms’, Sunday Independent, June 12
John Hutchinson, Irish Independent, June
Brian Fallon, ‘Jill Dennis and Denis Farrell at Taylor Galleries’, Irish Times, June
1987 David Brett, Circa Art Magazine, September/October
Fintan Power, ‘3 + 1 Show at Temple Gallery’, Irish Times, October 21
Clodagh Finn, Limerick Post, February 28
1986 Sam Walsh, ‘The New Generation’, Irish Arts Review, Spring
1985 Paul O’Reilly, ‘The New Generation’, Ballycasey Gallery Guide, October
John Hutchinson, In Dublin, August
Brian Fallon, ‘The Graduate Show’, Irish Times, August

'Memory's Darkroom' at The Dock, Ireland 2009

2010-01-24T04:11:00.001-08:00

Ecstasy's Aftermath

Memory's Darkroom (detail)

Memory's Darkroom

Lepanto (detail)

Lepanto

Hellspont

Astonishing Generosity

Isis and Orisis

(quote from Shakespeare)

Markanonio Bragadini's Envelope + Vast Morning (Battle of Lepanto)

Astonishing Generosity + Hellspont

Isis and Orisis + Astonishing Generosity

Memory's Darkroom + Lepanto

Lepanto

Ecstasy's Aftermath

Oil on gesso panel

2009-11-18T15:33:00.000-08:00

Dusty Thirsty

Noonday Zenith

Painting

2009-11-18T15:25:00.000-08:00

Art

2009-11-18T15:22:00.000-08:00

Artist

2009-11-18T15:18:00.000-08:00

Denis Farrell Painting

2009-11-18T11:42:00.000-08:00

Grid Paintings

2009-11-18T05:44:00.000-08:00