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Rare Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by Eamon O’Kane. There Is Another World, But It Is In This One, running from October 13 to November 10, marks the artist’s second solo turn at Rare gallery. The exhibition’s title is an allusion to a quote by W.B. Yeats, which O’Kane references in his work. His paintings and drawings serve as a visual allegory to the quote’s written implication to expose one’s childhood and heritage in one’s work. The show portrays an autobiographical world in the manner ascribed to by Yeats, who in a related way attempted to express his Irish upbringing in the context of British colonial rule. |
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“O’Kane’s work stands as an investigation into the inherent influences on the creative side of his life…”
Eamon O’Kane, Negative E-1027, 59 x 59 inches. Courtesy of Rare Gallery.
There is Another World, But It Is This One
Rare Gallery
Rare Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by Eamon O’Kane. There Is Another World, But It Is In This One, running from October 13 to November 10, marks the artist’s second solo turn at Rare gallery. The exhibition’s title is an allusion to a quote by W.B. Yeats, which O’Kane references in his work. His paintings and drawings serve as a visual allegory to the quote’s written implication to expose one’s childhood and heritage in one’s work. The show portrays an autobiographical world in the manner ascribed to by Yeats, who in a related way attempted to express his Irish upbringing in the context of British colonial rule.
O’Kane’s work stands as an investigation into the inherent influences on the creative side of his life, ranging from art and design to mathematics and engineering. The entire range of his output can be seen as a self-examination of the cumulative influences on his artistic method and conceptual development. The effects that architects, designers, and educators have had on O’Kane’s growth are manifested in his paintings, drawings, installations, sculptures, and animations. His work is a marriage of his signature draftsmanship, design, and painterly qualities, and the pragmatic yet creative forms and designs of his Modernist predecessors. Innovators such as Friedrich Fröbel, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Charles Eames are integrated into the artist’s oeuvre as a reflective form of self-analysis. O’Kane riffs on the achievements of master architects such as Wright and Philip Johnson by adding his own sensibility in the form of surreal landscaping and saturated, keyed-up colors. He also makes direct visual reference to Fröbel’s educational play materials known as “FröbelGifts,” which include geometric building blocks and pattern activity blocks that were inspirational to Wright, Le Corbusier, Eames, and Mondrian. He pays particular homage to the architectural eccentricities and peculiarities of the home in which he was raised in County Donegal and singles out Irish furniture designer and pioneer Modernist architect Eileen Gray.
*** This article was published by NY Arts Magazine, 2011. NY Arts Magazine is published by Abraham Lubelski. Sponsored by Broadway Gallery, NYC and World Art Media.
