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EAMON O'KANE
Der Glasraum, Gregory Lind Gallery, San Francisco, USA Sept. - Oct. 2010
Eamon O'Kane's solo show 'Der Glasraum' is selected in Flavorpill’s 10 Must-See Art Shows in USA for Fall 2010 flavorwire.com and flavorpill.com
The other 9 shows are
Lee Friedlander: America by Car at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York- Sue Williams: Al-Qaeda is the CIA at 303 Gallery, New York- JJ PEET: Shadow at On Stellar Rays, New York- Paul McCarthy: Three Sculptures at L&M Arts, Los Angeles- Jen DeNike: The Scrying Trilogy at The Company, Los Angeles- Ari Marcopoulos: No Cause at OHWOW, Miami- Kehinde Wiley: The World Stage: India-Sri Lanka at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago- Superflex at the Hirshhorn Museum, DC- Duke Riley: An Invitation to Lubberland at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland
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Interior I, oil on canvas,100 x 120cm, 2010
Glass House Reflections I, oil on canvas,100 x 120cm, 2010
Interior II, oil on canvas,100 x 100cm, 2010
Farnsworth House I, oil on canvas,100 x 100cm, 2010
Black Farnsworth House, oil on canvas,100 x 100cm, 2010
White Glass House, oil on canvas,100 x 100cm, 2010
Chair, acrylic on paper, 8.5 x11 inches, 2010- Stool, acrylic on paper, 8.5 x11 inches, 2010, - Sofa, acrylic on paper, 8.5 x11 inches, 2010
Tugenhat Chair - Barcelona Chair - Barcelona Stool, acrylic on paper, 8.5 x11 inches, 2010 -
Tubular Brno Chair - Blue Barcelona Chair- Flat Brno Chair, acrylic and coffee on paper, 8.5 x11 inches, 2010 -
Farnsworth House I, acrylic on paper, 8.5 x11 inches, 2010
Farnsworth House Foundation, acrylic on paper, 8.5 x11 inches, 2010
Farnsworth House Plans I, acrylic on paper, 8.5 x11 inches, 2010
Farnsworth House Plans II, acrylic on paper, 8.5 x11 inches, 2010
'Der Glasraum'
Gregory Lind Gallery is proud to present new work by Irish artist Eamon O’Kane. “Der Glasraum” is the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery and includes paintings and works on paper.In this exhibition, O'Kane explores the relationship between Philip Johnson's Glass House and Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House through a series of oil paintings on canvas and works on paper. Using the two buildings and their histories as a starting point, the artist plays with time, space, color and light in the series of paintings. The title of the show also references the Booker Prize shortlisted novel by Simon Mawer that creates a fictional story about Mies van der Rohe's Tugendhat Villa in Brno, Czech Republic. In the afterword of his book Mawer writes: “Raum is an expansive word. It is spacious, vague, precise, conceptual, literal, all those things…”
The paintings based on the Tugendhat Villa present interiors where the line between inside and outside is blurred. Natural elements creep in and begin to seemingly take over the architectural space. The artist also plays with reflections on the surface of the glass windows of the three houses, disrupting and abstracting the internal architectural spaces through layering the views of nature surrounding them. Plants appear to grow out of carpets in rooms and reflections of nature envelop the buildings.
Prospect Biennale Director Dan Cameron writes of the artist’s paintings, ‘Since at least 2005, which is when this writer first became acquainted with his work, O’Kane has used architecture as a jumping-off point for his meditations on nature by way of its mirror-opposite. One highly successful manifestation of this project is the ‘Ideal Homes’ series, in which iconic houses and housing styles from Bauhaus through Brutalism are transposed into idyllic settings, surrounded by lush sylvan landscapes that are only partially visible, but nonetheless designed to instill a kind of envy in the viewer for their impossible mix of utopian fantasy and bucolic sublime.’O'Kane splices the buildings together, merging the seasons in alternating positive and negative colors. Along with works on paper which depict furniture, objects, interiors and architectural plan drawings, the show looks at modernism's ongoing legacy and the pursuit of a Utopian architectural space and its uneasy relationship with nature.
Eamon O'Kane was born 1974 in Belfast, N. Ireland and holds a MFADT from Parsons School of Design, New York and a MFA from The University of Ulster, Belfast. O'Kane has had over forty solo exhibitions including shows in Berlin, Frankfurt, Dublin, Zurich, London and Copenhagen and New York, where he is represented by RARE Gallery. He has shown in numerous group exhibitions throughout Europe, in China and the United States. His artwork is in public and private collections worldwide, including Deutsche Bank; Burda Museum; Sammlung Südhausbau; Limerick City Gallery; FORTIS; Microsoft; Bank of Ireland Collection; Country Bank; Aspen RE; Rugby Art Gallery and Museum Collection. O’Kane is the recipient of many awards and scholarships, including the Taylor Art Award, The Tony O'Malley Award, Fulbright Award and a Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant. He has been featured in various art publications, including The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography (Princeton Architectural Press, 2009); Beyond Architecture (Gestalten, 2009); Spacecraft 2 (Gestalten, 2009); Neue Malerei: Erwerbungen 2002 – 2005 (Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2005). O'Kane lives and works in Odense, Denmark.Eamon O’Kane
Der Glasraum
September 9–October 16, 2010
Opening Reception: September 9 (5-7:30pm)
Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10:30–5:30 PM
Email: info@gregorylindgallery.comIrish painter O’Kane employs both meticulous quasi-realism and expressive, gelatinous abstraction in depicting half-imagined architectures. Hinting at the ghosts of their makers as much as the perceptual itinerary of their inhabitants, O’Kane’s new series fuses Modernist glass, steel, and concrete archetypes into psychologically and visually lush inversions of time, space, boundaries, and histories.
Irish fine artist Eamon O'Kane is obsessed with modernist architecture. In his 2008 painting Lloyd Wright Dreaming he depicted the interior of a Frank Lloyd Wright house. Through its window you could see the fictional (and Wright-inspired) Vandamm house, from Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959). In February 2010, O'Kane built a scale model of architect Philip Johnson's Glass House in the foyer of the 101 California building. For his current show Der Glasraum at Gregory Lind Gallery, the artist splices together the architecture of the Glass House and Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House. His work explores the dichotomy of angular avant-garde structures jutting up against nature. He also includes architectural floor plans, and captures modernist furniture like the Barcelona chair, using acrylic and coffee.
Joey Stevenson- Sep. 2010
Studio view, Denmark, 2010
© Eamon O'Kane 2010
