Sean McCarthy

"The rhythms of each composition often display a spiral viscosity that is executed by the artist’s skillful employment of the micro-pen."

Sean McCarthy at Fredericks & Freiser

 

Mary Cook

Sean McCarthy’s I Think Of Demons was on view at Fredericks & Freiser Gallery in New York January 25—March 1.

Sean McCarthy, Balaam, 2007. Ink and graphite on paper, 9 1/2 x 8 1/2 in. Courtesy of Fredericks & Freiser.

In I Think of Demons, Sean McCarthy’s first solo show at Fredericks & Freiser, the artist has created intricately drawn demons that inhabit the gallery walls as small-scale animal studies spread across the pages of a scientific illustration journal. However, these drawings are not to be underestimated as images that approach realism as an optimistic, everyday endeavor, but rather, as the earnest attempt of a skillful draftsman to utilize his imagination. McCarthy transports these figures from a far-off land, transforming them into portraits to now be studied, appreciated, gawked at, and admired.

These fantastical beings appear to have been created in the midst of wonderment and curiosity. The rhythms of each composition often display a spiral viscosity that is executed by the artist’s skillful employment of the micro-pen. McCarthy’s pristine marks are accented by subtle graphite details that can be seen only at closer inspection.

McCarthy eloquently evokes the “savageness” of the kinds of creatures that have been capturing our imaginations since Beowulf. One may also be reminded of the creatures found in the paintings of Pieter Bruegel, the etchings of Albrecht Dürer, or in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, and William Goldman’s The Princess Bride.

McCarthy’s details encapsulate the execution of a particular creation that is ferociously beautiful. Through his control of materials and attention to detail in Flehmen Response, he suggests a creature that is aggressive in its nature. This body reverberates as it spans the paper’s frame, with its wings sprawling stiffly from both sides; its majestic tail flows from under its thrusting pelvis. A caterpillar-like appendage violently propels from the creature’s chest and into the throat of a teeth–baring zebra head. The erotic undertones of this work underscore the formal relationships that McCarthy dexterously creates.

Brutal, yet nonetheless evincing a seeming ease, these creatures are unapologetic in their supernatural appearance. The three heads positioned frontally in Balaam are intertwined with an organic creature with scaly, snake-like features. The head of an ox, a gargoyle-like slug, and an elegantly feathered lama-bull keenly fan the top half of the image’s composition. These are conveniently balanced by the structure of an anchoring bear positioned like a throne, providing a resting place at the bottom of the composition. The eyes of these four tightly intertwined heads peer out at the spectator in calm attentiveness.