Infinite Plane
May 25 - July 31, 2015
Grey Noise, Dubai
Hunch, Sleeper, Red Flag - the titles Damien Flood selects for his paintings tell and obfuscate, tease and test. From word to paint, paint to word, any hint of object or subject is scattered to the four winds by Flood’s shorthand signature of stenographic strokes and squeegee trails of paint. Confronted with these verbal and visual ‘Big Bangs’ our eyeballs become castaways amidst a burgeoning unreality, where boundlessness resides within restrictiveness.
Guy, Lovers, Corset, from Flood’s verbal leg-ups we find purchase on the painted stuff that make up the artist’s very own cosmology. Deliberate squiggles drawn with the tip of a loaded paintbrush give definition, perform perspective leaps, and knit the marvellous matter of Flood’s nebulous universe together. We may be underwater, in a dream, or wandering across the cornea of something other? Whatever the lens, these freshly discovered new geographies challenge the capacity of the mind’s eye to construct a safe vantage point from which to begin looking, anew.
Constatin Brâncuși once stated “I ground matter to find the continuous line”. One of Flood’s most recent paintings titled Award, a painting that is Brâncușian in its curvilinear profile and golden resplendence, also demonstrates a similar marriage between matter and line. But form is only half of the story here. From the kinked rainbow in Frame to the doubly kinked telescope in Astronomer, an ambitious metaphysics of vision is taking place within and without the work. In the end Damien Flood’s paintings teeter on the very edges of … edges.
Text by James Merrigan
For his first solo exhibition at Grey Noise, Flood undertook a two-week research trip to Dubai and the surrounding areas of Sharjah and the coast of Oman. This trip formed a starting point for the paintings in 'Infinite Plane'. Flood documented his time through drawing, photography and text, in particular examining the juxtaposition of the newly built landscape with the enveloping historical areas. The paintings tow a line between abstract and figurative, at points becoming artefacts of his journey or records of witnessed events. The work offers the viewer a mood and feeling of the landscape while delving into the psychology of being a spectator in a new land.
This exhibition was made possible by the kind support of the Arts Council of Ireland, Elizabeth Fitzpatrick Travel Award and Culture Ireland.
About the Artist
b. 1979, Dublin, Ireland / Lives and works in Dublin, Ireland
Damien Flood’s work is grounded in early writings on philosophy, theology, alchemy and the natural sciences and explores the mutability of 'reality' and language.
Group exhibitions include: N G O R O N G O R O, Berlin Art Weekend, Lehderstr. 34, Berlin (2015); Promise of Palm Trees, Breese Little, London (2015); Renew, Green On Red Gallery, Dublin (2014); Island: New Art From Ireland, Galleria Civica di Modena, Italy (2013); Flood/NiBhriain/Vari, DOMOBAAL, London (2013); Cafe Paridiso (Least common denominator, or Rustenschacher), M1, Germany (2013); Making Familiar, Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin (2012); Crystalline, Millennium Court Arts Centre, Co. Armagh (2012); Last, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2012).
Solo exhibitions include: Interior Sun, Green On Red Gallery, Dublin (2014); Theatre of the World, Ormston House, Limerick (2012); Upland, Mermaid Arts Centre (2011); History of the Visitation, Green On Red Gallery, Dublin (2011) and Counter Earth, Green On Red Gallery, Dublin (2010). Flood was selected for the John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize in 2008 and 2010 and has had 3 books published: Afterworlds in 2013; Spectral Gallery in 2011 and Selected Works in 2010.
Damien Flood is represented by Green On Red Gallery, Dublin.
press release pdf / view show