Alan Magee : Some days I'm thinking, some days I'm dreaming

About

Castor Projects is pleased to present a solo exhibition of Irish artist Alan Magee “Some days I’m thinking, some days I’m dreaming.” 

Magee’s work crosses many disciplines from sculpture, installation and drawing, to a variety of lens-based media. Often addressing issues that arise from the politics of power, labour and control, Magee’s playful, often absurdist compositions juxtapose bodies and objects, high art and everyday life. The artist’s renderings of domestic objects take on powerful symbolism as the markers of the human condition.

In this body of work, Magee uses the language of painting, drawing and sculpture to create striking works that combine formal tension with a deeper emotional presence. Referencing domestic labour and daily routine, Magee raises questions around the nature work, art and power.

Using homemade oil paint, the artist employs the act of painting as a process of coating and covering, drawing connections to the body and its coverings, which in turn defines the scale of the work. In his working process paper sheets are softened, starched and hand-formed around steel structures, before being coated with the graphite oil paint. The steel structures, evoking domesticity in both scale and placement, are themselves caught between drawing and sculpture and also bring a sense of familiarity. 

In this exhibition Magee invites the viewer, through an encounter with these objects, to consider the works suggested performativity, enticing the viewer to imagine an alternate situation of how the works could have come to being.

Hanging, draping, slumped; the painted elements have an air of casualness; the gesture of their placement, seemingly an impulse. Like previous exhibitions from Magee, he uses these works to call to question the potential significance of small gestures and the implications of thought as a process of action.