DECEMBER 2007

finbar kelly

finbarkelly@broadstonestudios.com

Paintings at Hendrons Building 36-40 Upper Dominic Street, Dublin 7, Eire.
ON VIEW UNTIL 9TH DECEMBER

It is a long time since Finbar gave an exhibition of his work so this is very welcome. He works intensely on paper over the years but meanwhile these big canvases accrue their symbolic disposition over the same long period, worked on over and over. He travels to Germany to visit galleries in Cologne, Berlin and Dusseldorf, having an interest in the European context in which we now live. Some influence has been from Sigmar Polke (left) and Gerhard Richter who with Konrad Lueg formed a group "Kapitalistischen Realismus".

Finbar's paintings with their limited declarations in colour, that is used almost as in mapping, generates with the symbolic fortunes of line and curve a severe terrain with a creative force held in rein but powerful.The black of any area does not ever imply a negative.The black seams and blocks lay out areas of permeation for a future - it is the dark realm of decision and drive alright but never a bar or a death beyond. Having seen many of his paper 'texts' that lie integral to his decisions to explore thought in this way I would certainly like to see him have an exhibition of those works as well, as many of them are beautiful isolated images.Finbar should be showing these canvases and their related paper texts in Europe where I think he would get full appreciation and understanding.Jocelyn Braddell editor