The Glass Harmonica

About

David O’Kane(b.1985) is an Irish artist based in Europe and he has gained international recognition as a representative painter of the next generation by presenting a creative practice originated from figurative paintings. Though he deals with a wide range of media such as paintings, photography, animation, films and drawings, his signature pieces are epic and dreamlike paintings embodied through realistic techniques. In this solo show, O’Kane weaves his previous themes which he occasionally displayed into a united one. His work “The Glass Harmonica (2016)”, also a title of this exhibition, is a painting series depicting that a woman’s hand traces the rim of a wine glass in a sophisticated manner. The movements of the hand appear to be playing the musical glasses(a musical instrument which exploits a vibration of water in varied sizes of glasses.) He not only conveys the motion in the work but also continuously demonstrates a body that is gradually vanished and disassembled during the performance. While you chase after the vestige of the delicate fingertips rotating and drawing a circle, you can impliedly sense that a glass, a functional object easily seen in ordinary circumstances, can be shifted into a transcendent existence appealing for auditory sense. Thus, O’Kane adopts paintings as his vehicle revealing particular stories and situations with a spectacular effect. Even though the state of affairs contained in paintings is bound to be a static condition, he manages to capture sequential situations and moments and eventually casts them into a frame of painting. Hence, O’Kane maintains broken yet continuative storytelling through a serial form, by assigning a role as dynamic as a scene of movies to his work. O’Kane digs into unrealistic phenomena which exist in fragments in human’s consciousness: afterimages of dreams: recollections of certain movies: narratives irregularly mixed in one’s imagination. On the one hand, this mysterious universe that he creates can be predicted, but on the other, it actually is disengaged from a reality when you take a close look. He repeats redeploying figures with stories and historical-periodic settings onto his enigmatic picture plane composed of intense colours and expression. Consequently, it draws spectators into a situation which they do not generally experience. Especially the painting series operates as an orchestra of images allowing the viewers to speculate about the next scene, as if they watched an array of animation cuts. Although his objects hold each name, role and purpose, they do not directly offer a clue of what is happening at the instant caught in the painting, or what was happened and what will happen. It is worth noticing that O’Kane adopts fascinating narratives exceeding imaginations as his subject matter and demonstrates brush strokes retaining pictorial properties and realistic techniques. Besides, he shows a significant value and potential as he has established his authentic artistic style, despite his young age. Through a variety of new works presented in this exhibition, an audience would indulge in the unfolded world intersecting the realms between reality seen as make-believe and falsehood looked like truth. David O’Kane studied under Neo Rauch(b.1960), a leader of ‘New Leipzig School(NLS)’, for five years at Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig. He proved his artistic talent by winning the Golden Fleece Award, one of the prestigious Irish art prizes. Currenntly, O’Kane is actively presenting his works in multiple exhibitions all over the world.