HUGH McCARTHY 'Gasoline Rainbow'

About

New paintings from the young Irish artist. Abstract systems on the point of collapse. Self-contradictory sources from computer graphics to art history re-configured with a dynamic and self-consciously decorative impulse. As though obeying multiple instruction manuals, the paintings emerge from an implied order into a more happenstance reality. Our pleasure is imperilled. Moving from landscape to abstraction with energetic colour, across distorted grids and sophisticated line drawings, juxtaposing biomorphic and mechanical forms, masculine and feminine elements; he establishes a continuous and unsettling tension throughout. These new works contain a complex array of signs, symbols, colours, and shapes, a celebration of freedom - aesthetic, commercial, sexual or otherwise. His paintings represent not only the sleek image of contemporary life but also the very spirit of post-modern capitalism. Bright and artificial, the convergence reads like a textbook illustration of the Anxiety of Influence: these impossible paths weaving together past and future present simultaneously a retailer's utopian vision and, to the critic of consumer culture, a dystopian nightmare. His vision is celebratory and appalling in equal measure.