AUTREFOIS

A solo exhibition by Colm Mac Athlaoich

19 May - 18 June 2022

kindly supported by Fingal County Council

Grove Collective is pleased to present the upcoming exhibition Autrefois, a solo show by Irish artist Colm Mac Athlaoich, on view at Grove Collective’s Battersea space, from May 19th to June 18th, 2022. This is the second solo exhibition that Mac Athlaoich has had at the gallery, with the first coming in May of 2021.

Mac Athlaoich often produces discrete bodies of work, with all of the paintings revolving around a central theme. For Autrefois, Mac Athlaoich explains the impetus behind this most recent series as follows:

Autrefois follows on from my Percept series, where I treated my paintings as tools for exploring the relationship between painting and the photograph; ourselves and the image. Process became both central and conceptual, as in the mark-making was derived from analysing press or publicly published photographs in a way to dismantle the image. In doing so, expanding the time we spend looking and engaging with it, and challenging our understanding of perception. Certain criteria became more important to me, to isolate a narrative, to generate an ‘obedient eye’. Re-structuring of an image allows for new pictorial challenges as well as re-positioning the viewer’s relationship to the subject.

Autrefois takes its name from the title of a short film by American experimental film maker Edward Owens, ‘Autrefois j’ai aime une femme’ (1966). While watching this short I was taken by the simplicity and poetics of the layering narratives. I discovered a comparison between the treatment of the image in Owen’s work to that which I was trying to achieve with my painting, a slowing down or transitioning, movement captured.

My show Autrefois (In earlier times) presents a series of headshot photographs and film stills, taken from mid-century films. I chose to work figuratively in order to challenge my ability to work objectively with a set of personally related images. The subjects in this series are my grand uncles, Kieron Moore (Ciarán O’hAnnracháin) and his brother Colm O’hAnnracháin. Both started their careers in Ireland before emigrating abroad. There is something curated, fixed about these images — they have been considered, lighting is planned and positioning purposed. Through a process of digital editing and chance, absurd and fantastical new compositions provide a starting point for each work. Photoshop has been used to unearth hidden colours from the black and white original image. Painting once again confronts the photographed image, asking how far it can go before it’s completely altered.

Indeed, coming back to questions of mediation and resultant abstractions, Mac Athlaoich returns with a body of work that is at once vibrantly new, as well as a logical progression from past series. His precise language of discovery – “unearth” – pays tribute to this: it recalls finding something new, but only by digging deeper, moving past initial obstacles or questions.

For Grove Collective, Autrefois provides another opportunity to work with an artist who has formed a core part of the gallery’s early programming. Last year’s exhibition with Mac Athlaoich, Percept/Pathos, was the gallery’s first solo exhibition, and marked the publication of the gallery’s first printed catalogue. Now in 2022, the gallery hopes this exhibition to be an exciting update from a beloved artist, and a next step in a long collaboration.

Percept / Ethos Galleria Weber & Weber, Turin, Italy curator: Valeria Ceregini Nov 2 - Dec 23, 2021

kindly supported by Culture Ireland and Fingal County Council.

Artist’s statement:

This exhibition of paintings look at the materiality of the photographed flag first as an object and secondly as the embodiment of a multitude of narratives. The assortment of flags selected for the work are sourced online as well as from my own personal documentation. My position in relation to the photographic image itself is to accept it as an archived object, sourced online and of differing resolutions, these images are monuments to events, allowing the flag to carry its symbolism into an awaiting narrative. The show itself hopes to generate a dialogue between the works as a collection but also individually with themselves.

The paintings are approached like that of the use of a flag; placement, design, colour, symbol, context, text, message. All these possibilities that co-exist with the flag. The painting process invites these elements in its construction. 

The question is always what is painting for? what can it do and should do in relation to the subject. The subject of the flag in this series is questioning its purpose, its meaning. This question is hi-lighted for me when considering the recently designed Refugee flag, created for the Tokyo Olympics, the flag represents a nationless identity, it up-turns our notion of semiotics, symbolism, Nationalism, it's counter-colonial. Much of our perception with flags is tied to colour and motif, so to upturn these cues is to play with our ideas of identity or at least to question our relationship with them. 

Exhibition text: Valeria Ceregini

The Irish Brussels-based artist Colm Mac Athlaoich retraces in his most recent works the phases of the Aristoteles’ rhetoric about percept intended as perceptum. The artist’s percept concern the analysis of the pictorial object as a figurative and representative element of a real object transfigured by the artist on the canvas. This abstractive process – typical of Mac Athlaoich’s painting – underlie however deeper matters related to the percept of the artwork itself and what it represents and means.

The artist has begun to work backwards the percept phases starting from pathos, moving across logos, and arriving now to the ethos stage. This is the initial phase that establishes the central role of the orator in arranging his arguments. In this way, Mac Athlaoich presents himself as a visual lecturer who is questioning the intrinsic meaning of flags and his ethical approach to that subject. He is presenting the metaphoric and narrative issue related to flags which with their iconicity and figurative promptness are communicating political and social messages. Instead, the artist’s intention is not to argue or define any socio-political message, but rather to destructure the images to get a destabilise message and reveal different communicative levels. In order that on the canvas remain only the essence of flags as abstract figurative elements often deducible only by titles.

Through the title – and so the use of words together with images – we rediscover the importance of the word, or even better to say of parole following the Saussurean dichotomies langue and parole. In other words, the distinction between the collective and social aspects (langue) and the linguistic symbol (parole) of any language. Furthermore, here the title works as metalanguage since it helps us to deduce the subject of the painting. This subject in a certain way is an image of reality, an imitation of reality according to the ancient etymological meaning of image, imitari, and it is exactly what is happening with Mac Athlaoich’s paintings. He is imitating images that are coming from reality like from his private photographic archive or got from the internet and social media, but what he is made is decomposing the message denoted by the photograph (analogon) to introduce the viewer into a connoted message by the same viewer. Here the bystander got the role of a lector in fabula which has to embrace and cognitively complete the artwork as a «text [since] it wants that someone helps it to work» because «it is a consequence whose interpretative fate has to be part of its own generative mechanism» (U. Eco, Lector in Fabula, 1979).

This new series of works invites, indeed, to interpretative cooperation between the bystander and the artist, and to a generative mechanism of meaning subjected to constantly change depending on the viewer and their consequent interpretation. Colm Mac Athlaoich, as a narrator, releases his interpretative creativity about the symbolic object ‘flag’ however avoiding the viewer of any interpretative or visual limit; rather the viewer is invited to actively complete the work through their own emotional and intellectual intelligence. Every layer of colour, shape and meaning is arbitrary. In fact, the paintings go through a constant process of layering and removing, painting, glazing, scratching and scraping, and this is demonstrating once more how the artist wants to objectify and destructure the flag to look at its essence and to subvert the perceptive and ethical meaning.

Percept / Logos HangTough Contemporary, Dublin, Ireland 12.08.21 – 29.08.21

Kindly supported by Fingal County Council

Artist’s statement

The exhibition ‘Percept/Logos’ takes its source from Press photography of the Israeli Palestine conflict. ‘Percept’ (the sensory impression of an object), ‘Logos’ (appeal to logic) tries to find a way to question notions of neutrality and ambiguity when dealing with the subject of war. While remaining sensitive to the subject, an attempt is made to extract the materiality of war from these images. Equally the relationship between photography and painting is brought into question by considering critical positioning and appropriation. The images go through a process of drawing studies to isolate the construction of the composition, the finished works then become abstract collages of these elements.

Exhibition text: Els Opsomer

Some thoughts following our summer conversations and shared concern. - August 2021, Berlin - Brussels

Dear Colm,

The common thread in our artistic approach tries to understand the impact of images and, in general, how images do not show us what they want to tell. The issue is the frame, which excludes and extracts. Reality or perception is so much more than what we see.

For this intriguing series of paintings, you start from found images, photographs from the internet. The different stages of the existence of the chosen image fascinates me. When does an image attract your attention? What were the circumstances when the image was taken? Why did the photographer decide to capture the moment? When do you decide to use this image as an inspiration? Where do you save the image? With whom do you share it? And who looks at it? Even the trivial afterlife of its existence adds to its significance.

Your process of appropriation adds a huge part to its meaning. What is the result of the manipulations in its depiction? What do you extract or add? Does it simplify the image? Or does it embellish a cruel reality? Does it mystify or does it hush the voice of daily reality?

I am intrigued by your approach and fascinated by the subtle attitude you expose towards the images you find. This appropriation is one of kindness, reluctance and respect. It emphasizes and invites to look carefully. Your paintings are layered. As they appear, they question. There is even some reluctance in your strikes. There is the stillness and beauty that makes a viewer more attentive and eager to look with stronger attention. Through a closer look not only do nuances of materiality appear, the main characteristic is the poetry of observation.

Press photographs are to me, the most ambiguous and difficult to work with. We are invaded by press images and often overwhelmed by what they try to perceive or tell. It is, as you know, one of my personal quests, how do deal with the reality as she is presented on a daily basis. How to digest, look and perceive these images?

Your paintings abstract the rawness of reality. On one hand the image of reality becomes more obscure, on the other hand it makes it more palpable. Your visual attitude is one of hesitation and perseverance combined. ‘The world given at noon’ comes in different versions, 1.2.3.. Are they all different ‘images’ or other views of a similar ‘theme’? The reiterations give some rest, softness and understanding. It is foremost an invitation to look and relook at the painting and to imagine the mother source. Just a slight hint of what could be the premises of the original image, is given.

The pictorial elements; the added layers, the overlayering of persons or flags do not result in a thick surface. They rather detangle reality than expose brutal thoughts ... reluctance everywhere. You and your paintings seem to question humanity all together.

The entourage in which an image is received is often overlooked. Press images come on all kind of websites, papers and can even become emblematic as single image. Although the world pushes everyone to take a stand or to ‘understand’, the knowledge of what is there in the image is quite confusing. It is only a part and a framed reality. Each image we see, and certainly those we appropriate by manipulation, enter a private and intimate space. This intimate space is important. It adds a breath, a heartbeat and a life expectation to the image. It gives longevity to its existence.

During our first summer talk you shared some images of your paintings on your computer — as common as it is to share images through electronic screens. Almost all conversations are fed in this manner today. As a visual person it often satisfies my need to see, look and share visions through images. I cannot deny the casually shared images at a table always impregnate an intimate space. They colour, they frame and they contextualize our lived reality.

Fortunately I visited the paintings in your studio. There I found the intimacy of a space, which gave a lot of breath to their existence. Not only was there light, but room to watch them as well. The painting where hung on a white wall. The sun was shining. The depicted shapes, youngsters I presume, got a mysterious depth in their depiction. They were put upon each other as if they are added value of each other. A mis-en-abîme of themselves or the other; an endless reflection of their own appearance or the other; a glow and reason to exist.

One painting was placed upon some wood, another next to a hand drill. At this point it became clear to me that the trivial afterlife of an image adds to its significance and eagerness to exist. The classic clean wall is extracting life. Although it sharpens the concentration and attention, the surrounded objects and the casual placing in its surroundings gave these painting more perseverance in the necessity of being shown. The glow, lines and details of the shapes, boys and flags, became a way of drawing attention to current affairs in a lived environment, through the quietness of the surrounded space.

The ensemble of the work presented as a personality in the room. Ready to be looked at with the all the knowledge and heritage you carry as a viewer. The beauty, questioning and subtle confrontation you enable with your work in your space was a cherished moment of the summer 2021. And now the work will travel. It will expose oneself in another context. How will this context add longevity and value to your paintings? Will the viewer take his intimate space into account during the reading of your paintings once exhibited on a white cube wall? Will the viewer become part of an experience and, above all, part of the questioning? Will the viewer understand your soothing and intriguing view of the problematic nature of a press image? Press Folds 1.2.3. will unfold and The World Given at Noon 1.2.3. will be exposed in the evening. Hopefully impregnated after long travel overseas, another reading to your exquisite /delicate paintings, will appear and amplify the impact of your work.

I wish them good luck and an adventurous life.

About the author: Els Opsomer, an artist living and working in Brussels (BE) and Rufisque (SN) is the head of the master of photography program at Luca School of Arts, Brussels. She examines whether artistic resistance can counter the tense visual culture that engulfs us.

Percept/Pathos Grove Collective, London, UK 06.05.21 – 19.05.21 Kindly supported by Fingal County Council.

Artist’s satement:

Percept/Pathos is the second instalment in a series of exhibitions programmed for 2021. This particular show draws its source material from a post made on Instagram by New York-based designer and sculptor Erik Bergrin earlier this year – a series colourised portraits of immigrants arriving through Ellis Island at the turn of the last century. However, process and methodology are at the core of Mac Athlaoich’s interpolation of these images: the activation of photographs through colourisation, along with their reposting on social image platforms, begin a journey for the image which he wants to continue in these paintings. Through a process of drawing studies, cropping and digital editing, the compositions arrive at a point of abstraction that echo the various histories of the original image. The reference to “Pathos” in this show comes from the Stoic use of the term, “complaints of the soul,” or appeals to the emotions – visual hooks which we fall prey to on a daily basis. The term “Percept” can be understood as how one explores these observations when confronted with the found image.

Conversation with Erik Bergrin:

CMA

For this exhibition, I’m using images that I found online, which you had posted, but I’m not just copying them – I’m using them with a particular intention, and I have my own ideas behind this source material, which is what makes it interesting for me. That’s to say, there’s a reason why I’m using this source material – it serves a purpose, and there’s a relevance.

EB

People are attracted to things for specific reasons. There are so many images that you’re not attracted to, that when you see something that’s drawn you in and you feel connected to it, it’s always more than just deciding to use an image.

CMA

It also depends what your practice is as well – like, when you make work inspired by Buddhist monks, even the material becomes important as part of a broader process and project. For me, that elevates the work and gives it more gravitas, when an idea becomes all-encompassing. But even for me, when I’m painting, even though I’m going to put my stamp on it – it’s my colours, my style, my work – it’s still important for me to maintain the thread connecting my ideas from my painting to my source material. So, what really interested me in this series of photographs that you posted was the journey of the image itself: there were black and white images that were colourised, and then they were posted online. Then I took it, I did a series of drawings, and abstracted it to the point where it becomes a painting. So it’s a simple, straightforward story of how artists work with source imagery, but I wanted to draw attention to both that initial attraction to an image, and its subsequent journey. You probably still remember the original photographs?

EB

Yeah, I do remember them.

CMA

Something that I quite liked as well was the way that you did a little synopsis of each photograph. Were they your words or were they taken from somewhere?

EB

They were taken from the book of photos. It took me a long time to do, and I usually don’t do those posts. There were a lot of photographs, and I had to choose which ones to use, and then remember the order that I posted them in order to write the caption. It was a lot of work, but they were so amazing that it really felt worth it.

CMA

It’s interesting what you said in an email to me: it’s quite easy to over-intellectualise and to put words onto ideas; to dissect photographs, and unravel this attraction. But there’s something incredibly poignant about them on their own, there’s something immediately alluring about them. I think the colourisation of these photographs definitely adds that wow factor – it’s like breathing life into something that was dead. I think the original [black and white] photographs would have been incredible as well, but the colourisation definitely hits you.

EB

Putting words to things puts them in a box, and you can’t actually experience anything. However, it is always interesting to know why I’m attracted to something. For example, on my Instagram, there’s a running thought between them all, but I don’t know if I could articulate what that thought is.

CMA

I can see that. Maybe you can call that your aesthetic? But I think it’s probably something more than that; you can’t just reduce it into a single word like that. Every post you do is probably loaded with the experience that led you to that image. But this particular show is called “Percept/Pathos”. “Percept” as a term really interests me; the difference between a percept and a concept is that a percept involves sensations and memories, whereas concepts only involve memories. So when you see it, it’s more than just a memory trigger, it’s a sensory trigger as well; it’s often something that you actually can’t explain, and words will do no good. But what interests me about this term is that I can draw a lot of parallels to painting and how we actually see and look at art. We can talk and describe the ideas behind it, but ultimately, my explanation or someone else’s explanation falls on deaf ears when a spectator looks at it, because they’ll experience it for themselves, and see it in a way that you can’t dictate to them.

EB

Do you think, as the creator, that you can have a desired effect on people, and basically trigger the same sensorial response for everyone?

CMA

Maybe the reason why I’m pulled towards abstraction is that I like to leave the image unresolved; I like to leave the viewer to find something else in the image for themselves, allowing the image to continue existing without a “full stop”. There’s always a friction between realising the image – it’ll be nearly recognisable, and then it’s not. And that’s always a challenge with yourself – you’re fighting to resolve an image for yourself, and then you have to pull yourself back; stop yourself. But that’s the act of painting, I suppose. Is it different when you’re making a garment? Maybe your design has to be very exact for when it gets to the cutting room; maybe the thought process is different.

EB

I go through so many changes throughout that I’m never really sure where a piece will end up. There are a lot of unknowns – I’ll often start with drawings (which I usually like to stick to) but they change, and come back, and there’s always an element of chance.

CMA

It’s quite nice to take work on that journey. I mean, you can’t create something from thin air, there needs to be a starting point or subtext, but from there, how it gets resolved is a very personal thing.

EB

How do you know when to stop?

CMA

It can be difficult; sometimes it’s very tempting just to keep going. I mean, if I had more time, I probably would keep on adding layers and pushing the image further into obscurity. A lot of it has to do with your headspace as well, because there’s a lot of sitting and staring at the canvas for hours, doing nothing. Also, for me, music features in the process – I’ve got a long background in music, particularly jazz and classical music, which has informed much of the structure of my work. Not to draw too many parallels, but there are harmonies and rhythms. I do definitely believe my background in music has played a role in how I work and how I stop a piece.

EB

Did the music come first?

CMA

Yeah! I probably would have been drawing as a kid – you know, crayons and all that – but in terms of formal training, it was music.

EB

That makes sense to me – even though jazz seems so chaotic, there’s still a kind of structureless structure.

CMA

Jazz is very structured; it’s so phenomenally structured, but they make it sound chaotic. That’s the genius of jazz – you’re an architect and a labourer at the same time; you’re designing and building on the spot.

EB

And what about colour in your paintings; how do you use colour?

CMA

I suppose I would use colour as a form of expression. My relationship with colour is very intuitive, and becomes a kind of guiding language. In that regard, it’s much like my relationship to music. For me, colour can sometimes take over form, and can be what leads the way forward with any given painting. And considering this battle with form, it’s nice to have colour as a dominant tool in my arsenal. Even with these source images, which were coloured, they maybe offered hints, but I didn’t strictly use the colours of the images.

EB

I hate the word “intuitive,” but I don’t think there’s really another way to say it: with colour, it’s rare that I make something and question what colour it should be. I always stick to earth tones and tones that are organic. In fact, I recently was working on a piece, and because the material I was using comes in different colours, I was trying different colours, and I don’t think I had ever done that before. I’ve never questioned why I don’t do that before, but now you’ve brought it up – I guess I feel like, for me, colour is very secondary to material.

CMA

It must be very different for you because you must decide before the actual production [of materials], whereas with paints, it’s different. It’s like the score that you write – you have way more immediate power. But, knowing your work, I think you’re right; I think colour isn’t your thing. I believe everyone has an “Inner Palette” that they tap into, for sure, and that’s informed by God knows what.

EB

Do you think that because you’re a painter, and you can make that immediate colour change, that you then change it more? Or rather, because I have to think about that stuff before I actually do it, and it’s more of a process to change it, that my process develops more of an intuition, because I’ve had to? Or do they still work in the same way?

CMA

My background before painting was in printmaking, so when you’re working with that process, colour is a bit like with textiles: you have to decide what colour plates to use. You can’t be as liberal with your style. I’m very conservative with my decision making, initially; I don’t just go wild with the paint. It’s quite methodical actually, and I do labour for quite a long time over deciding what the next colour should be. But I also use colour to reconstruct form – so if there was a pencil sketch line that was cutting across the canvas, I’d mix a canvas colour paint to cover it. I very rarely use a brush – I use palette knives – so you’re scooping and mixing and spreading and scraping, and it actually becomes quite a physical process. That physicality makes the process feel less flippant than just choosing colours.

EB

It seems like you have some pretty good outlets – painting and music.

CMA

Well, painting, music, and cycling – although I did recently get into meditation as well, which has been great! I’ve been doing this thing called watsu massage – do you know it?

EB

I don’t! I’ll have to check it out. But I do want to ask: Do you ever design your paintings beforehand? Does design come into it at all?

CMA

That’s a really interesting question! There definitely is a design aspect, in that there’s a composition that ends up on the canvas, which I’ll arrive at from a series of sketches and drawings of the source material – I need something to start with. I’ll often do a sketch from the source, then project that sketch onto the canvas and do an outline, so I’ve got a framework to work with. So in that sense, there is an element of design, but it’s only to get away from the original source, because I don’t want to copy the original. By the time there’s an image on the canvas, it’s gone through a few rounds of drawing and projection, and so forth. But like I said, I’m designing with colour and using colour gradients.

EB

When the drawing is on the canvas and ready to paint, do you usually do the drawing?

CMA

No, no – the drawing is just something to bounce off. When I start painting, the foundation [of the drawing] is this point of control, and then you reach a point when you start figuring out what you need to do. Once the pieces begin to come together, you can take liberties and make decisions. Actually, I’ll purposely force myself into difficult situations with painting – I’ll decide to put horrible colours down and then cover over a big section that I’ve already worked on in order to figure out how to fix it. I suppose part of my practice is that I’ll purposely self-sabotage the work at times to get out of the comfort zone, and out of the neatness of working in a certain way. Maybe it comes from being taught to embrace happy accidents as a kid?

EB

It seems like you put yourself in those tough situations because [that struggle] is where the gold is going to come from.

CMA

The more you practice something, the better you get at it, and the better you get at it, the easier it becomes. Naturally, as a human, you figure out ways of problem solving so that you don’t have to face those problems anymore. And I think in many ways, painting is problem solving, meaning that you constantly have to generate challenges for yourself. That’s the rationale of the self- sabotage. It’s also a way to not take your process for granted; you have to think about how and why you do things.

EB

Coming from a design background, I was making costumes and then started making sculpture. So I’m still doing sculpture from almost a design standpoint, but [the sculptural process] is a lot more free-flowing, with much more “release.” But I do often go back to costume design, so I’m balancing between art and design. This isn’t everyone’s process, but there’s something about art that makes me want to approach it as more free-flowing, without always planning it out.

CMA

Well, I would definitely identify you as an artist – but these titles are irrelevant for me. It’s more about hearing your process and about how you make your work which is intriguing. I rate artists by what inspires them and how they go about realising that in a piece. So you’re an artist – although, you may not align yourself with the art world.

EB

It’s just that you have to find the place for these [works], but I also don’t really want to – gallery shows make the most sense because I’m not making them for stage or screen, and I guess they don’t have much of a purpose beyond being displayed. I’m kind of floating between these distinctions. There is a hierarchy, though: when you’re called an artist, it’s a step above a designer in a sense. It’s not really... but there’s something there.

CMA

Maybe that has to do with the commercialisation of fashion, but there are of course designers who work on specific projects, get funding, and they’re incredible – they bow to no one.

EB

But painting – that’s so free-flowing.

CMA

Painters: we’ve got a crazy, long, heavy history on our shoulders in the canon, which we’re constantly reminded of. Talking to a lot of French and Belgian painters in Brussels, they’re super conscious of the history of painting in their country. Particularly the French; if you’re a painter, you grow up being told you’ll never be as good as the great Matisse or Renoir and all that. Conversely, being Irish, we’re more famous for our writers than our visual arts, so I feel completely liberated in that sense. I feel free to do what I want to do.

Erik Bergrin: website

Percept Luan Gallery, Athlone, Ireland 11.05.21 – 11.07.21 Kindly supported by Fingal County Council

Artist’s satement:

Perception, ways of seeing, ways of re-calling what has been told, how is an image, a scene, and object viewed a second time. Abstraction is a re-telling of an image, whether it is still representative or not, it still has gone through a process of re-telling. Like the re-telling of a story it is never flawless, there are liberties taken, pauses where there was once flow, verbosity where there was once restraint. The narrative is contained within the retelling in the small incidental nuances of that action. In this exhibition source material from online social platforms as well as self documentation form a starting point to explore ideas of contemporary pathos and idyll. I’m interested in the incidental nuances in the process of painting when thinking about the abstraction of re- telling an image.

In early January 2021, Colm Mac Athlaoich began to meet with Antoine Langenieux-Villard and Amelia Bowles to discuss painting, process’s and rituals in order to commemorate Mac Athlaoich’s Solo show ‘Percept’. The following conversation is the result of these meetings.

A painting is always unfinished. When the painter leaves his brush, it is the beginning for the spectator, to face this event in time. The vibrations between thinking, doing and seeing lead us to discuss what is behind the image and to consider the different moments that belong to the surface. To look at a painting is to engage with an object of sensation. The impression it leaves is born in the action of one body on another. This phenomenon implies an optical and corporeal movement towards the exterior. Painting is not only an object of retinal pleasure, but a stratified surface that confronts the viewer physically, psychologically and temporally. This event establishes a dialectic, it creates a new gaze, in which the painting marks the subject and vice-versa.

Prior to painting

Regardless of the technique, aesthetic or concept employed, there is one thing all painters have in common: the moments of research and reflection. Silent, intense and preceding the act of painting itself. It would be a mistake to think the surface on which the painter is about to paint is white. Far from it, the surface is black and chaotic writes Gilles Deleuze, because “everything the painter has in his head and around him is present on the canvas, as actual or virtual images”. The painter must clear, disentangle, clean the surface. To paint is to organise encounters between textures, materials, gestures and colours. It is to open up a space both physical and conceptual. Hence, painting begins before the brushes are in hand. It is not only the action that matters but the mechanisms the artist deploys to objectify his desire. In other words, the surface is produced and defined as a process, it is not a given or something that already exists. Painting is a place where forms emerge, to create a surface where time and accident occur while making.

Colm Mac Athlaoich’s places the conflict between figuration and abstraction at the centre of his investigation. Shapes and interlocking blocks of colours emerge from a number of manipulations prior to and during painting. Scraping, drawing, collaging, projecting, editing, colouring, patterning and inverting. We are drawn to familiar, yet unknown places. One tries to recognise figures and landscapes but always returns to the painting fact, the material itself. The tactile gaze trains us to fall in a place of harmony and musicality through the use of his soft colours and elaborated compositions. Everything is above and under the surface. The work does not exist as what we see, but as what we feel.

Introduction by Antoine Langenieux-Villard & Amelia Bowles

AB: How do you describe the way your paintings fluctuate in-between figuration and abstraction and what are your intentions behind blurring these boundaries?

CMA: I would call it a friction and this conflict is something I enjoy working with which I find present in the space between representation and abstraction. It’s also an idea of resolution, something which has yet to be defined and this opens the picture plane to interpretation. The image is always there but I want to shift my attention towards the materiality of painting. In this way the image doesn’t draw my attention away from the process, which I believe needs to be freed from the subjectivity and requires a new dialogue with the medium. Yes there is a starting point, a beginning, but then there is a transition that occurs and of course the final result which continues forever. If I can arrive at a stage in my work that somehow shows this transition I feel satisfied. Perhaps this is what I like about the roughness of a Rodin sculpture, there’s enough information to grasp the object yet the residual marks of editing and decision making are still present. Another way I try to arrive at abstraction is working in a series. I know this is something both of you as painters employ in your practice, perhaps we use it for different reasons?

AB: The seriality in my work is not a way to arrive at abstraction, my goal is to reduce painting to its fundamental qualities, light, colour and surface. So we can be informed through an experience of those qualities itself. I work in series of multi-panelled components and each series may be personifying a narrative, or responding to a particular site.

ALV: Differently, my work is serial because of the materials employed for each body of work. Their titles refers to the technique, or readings that have influenced the making. The only specificity is that they are an on-going series. I like to think that I can return to a specific technique years later to add something, or change some settings in my production process. Whereas, the way you approach making a series allows you to work from an image that deeply resonates with you and explore it from varying perspectives. Almost until it becomes something else. How do you manipulate the original image, so one painting feeds into the next?

CMA: I like to think of a series as creating stability with an idea. It’s fascinating the different way we look at a painting if it’s a singular work or part of a series. The weight of the singular image itself almost demands a different attention. A series digests and regurgitates that initial image and by doing so draws my attention to the fundamental qualities of the initial source. I like this analogy because it speaks of the weightlessness of painting and of ideas in art. It also forces you to explore that idea or the medium to its limits. In this exhibition my series ‘Flavian Garden’ began with a photograph I found on Instagram, a holiday photo taken by a friend of the entrance to the Colosseum in Rome. I was captured by the fact that there seemed to be an image within an image, interesting forms created by light, so much depth to it and the thought of working with this into a series would present a great pictorial challenge for me. The variations take cues from each previous painting which are reconstructed in photoshop, then projected onto the canvas. I suppose I do this as a way to distance myself further from the subject while shifting my focus on what I have just painted. Each subsequent painting opens up new compositional challenges so I constantly switch between brush and palette knife, sketchbook to projector.

Another work which has two variants is ‘Places de Vosges’ based on a photograph I took of a boy watching men spar in a park in Paris. The blurred composition happened to line up beautifully and left out enough information for me to work with. Sometimes a motif created in one variation will be continued into the next or it might be augmenting colour so to change the balance of the work but always referring back to the source.

AB: Thinking about sequencing and seriality, I wonder if your vast and very technical knowledge of music has influenced the way you think about painting? As I know you play the trumpet professionally and classical music played a significant role as you were growing up.

CMA: My formal training as a musician no doubt has led me to approach painting in a certain way. Particularly in the idea of exploring motifs, repetition, sequences, ideas of colour and form. Within this exhibition there is the series ‘Flavian Garden’ as well as pairs of works alongside individual pieces that stand alone so not all works are part of a series. I like to think of the sequential work as theme and variations, to give it a musical analogy, or similar to how in Jazz a simple eight bar melody can expand exponentially through the use of inversions and motifs, but all refer back to the original and in doing so reinforce the first idea. In jazz the musician is both the architect and labourer at the same time, thought and action occur simultaneously. I was never that good at jazz but I understand what is required, a fluid vocabulary which can be applied instantly and with confidence. This is what is required from a painter.

“To paint is the act, to bind thought to the desire for an object” 1/L’apparition du visible, Christian Bonnefoi – Ann Hindry, p.28 : “Peindre, c’est passer à l’acte, lier la pensée au désir d’objet.”

ALV: We keep coming back to the importance of the material itself, can you expand on some of the painting techniques you employ while making?

CMA: I work on cotton canvas and linen, sometimes primed with gesso or alternatively transparent rabbit skin glue. The painting really begins at this stage as I will often work with the base layer and allow it to be seen, using it as a counterpart to heavier application of paint. I think of the surface a lot, in this way the painting process can be quite sculptural, replacing a brush with a palette knife means I end up scraping off painted layers and then apply a heavy deposit of accumulated paint on the canvas like a heap of cement on a brick. I make my colour decisions on the fly, this would perhaps be one of my rituals, to have an idea of how the work is progressing but always allowing room for spontaneous change. I listen to music while working, more as a distraction than inspiration however the music of Philip Glass and Brian Eno can get you into a trance like state which is useful sometimes.

ADB: You often mention a quote by Miles Davis where he speaks about achieving romantic sentiment without nostalgia. Do you think this relates to the subtleties you create in your work and in particular has it influenced your soft and muted colour palette?

CMA: My relationship to colour has been developed through many different influences. Having spent my formative years in the Printmaking department of NCAD often working monochromatically you try to create a tonal language with line in the absence of colour. I often refer to Goya’s graphic work which is a mastery in tone, rhythm and movement using just one colour. Printmaking slows your decision making to such a degree that everything is considered thoroughly. I think this consideration has filtered into my application of colour in paint, which in turn has led me to place a great emphasis on the role of colour in my work. Just before his death I was fortunate to see a retrospective of Per Kirkeby’s work which was a turning point for me, in that it revealed the relationship you must have with colour is one that is built up over a long period of time and with absolute intimacy. You can create chaos or harmony by placing two different tones side by side and this is something that I find alluring, it pulls me in. It’s funny when you say soft and muted colours as I don’t see them as that, in fact I use quite vibrant colours but manipulate them with soft gradients and punctuated use so that they don’t dominate. I do like to play with tones which generate a certain sensation which perhaps refers to the Miles Davis quote I often use, about ‘being romantic without being nostalgic’, which is such an incredibly difficult thing to achieve, but when you hear him play he can do just this. Most artists I admire reveal in their work subtle echos of the past while remaining true to the present, whether it be colour, structure or some other ethereal element. I think it was Merleau-Ponty who recognised this relationship we have with our past through the ideas and colours we use, both belong to and emerge in our relationship to the world and to history. It always fascinates me to recognise the subtleties of these mechanisms at play, I suppose I am aware of this too while painting.

ALV: This idea from Merleau-Ponty defines what percepts are and how emotionally charged our perception is. It is also great to learn about how in printmaking you create a colour tone with only lines. When I saw the painting “019_03_20_19_20_34.mp3” in your studio, you demonstrated this problem well. I was struck by the agility and endurance that is required to paint such repetitive lines, when initially it may appear simple. I also enjoy the sense of temporality the painted lines gather.

CMA: Yes some of my work gets reduced to a single colour plain, not quite a monochrome but close. I would say that these works are heavily influenced by printmaking, using cross hatch and mark making in a linear way almost feels closer to drawing than painting. There is also the graphic language of print which feeds into my work, I see lines and painted gradients as devices which stand in for the representative image. ADB: Your exhibition is perhaps a way to consider what happens next? How one might digest the time that has been spent in front of a painting. No longer a conversation about the perception we arrive with, but instead the felt understanding we leave with.

CMA: I suppose my approach to painting is always dealing with this question of the emotional response to seeing. To leave a painting unresolved in a way is to suspend the action of conclusion, resisting the urge to bring about finality. This approach to painting and thinking is intended to slow down the gaze, in a way to perhaps mimic the time spent in front of the canvas. It might be similar to understanding Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Duck-Rabbit theory, where you see both a duck and a rabbit in the same image, the inconclusiveness of my work plays upon this notion of our ability to find in an image what we choose to see or as Deleuze suggests “to wrest the percept from perceptions of objects”.

Antoine Langenieux-Villard: website

Amelia Bowles: website

Bodies, Language and Truth Atelier Coliseum, Brussels, Belgium, 2020

Artist’s satement:

‘Mar a chonnac-sa Éire’ (As I saw Ireland) is a book first published in 1937 by author and poet Peadar O hAnnracháin. In it he documents a bicycle journey from the north to south coast of Ireland, taking in the remaining gaeltacht areas (Irish- speaking regions) which had still survived throughout Irish history. The trip’s purpose was to grasp how the indigenous language had survived by discovering new vocabulary and listening to local stories. What is revealed is a snap shot of the country at a time in place, observed and unearthed through inquiry.

This book, written by my great grandfather is printed in gaelic and in the old typeface of the language, which was replaced by common type between 1961 and 1965. The dialect in which he wrote was the munster vernacular, collectively these factors make the book quite challenging for a modern reader. In some ways, the necessary tools needed for interpreting these stories reminded me of the term used for Deleuzian and postmodern philosophies, defined by the phrase: ‘there are only bodies and languages’. This phrase indicates our understanding of the world can only be understood through the corporal experience and a shared language. The phrase is captured in the term ‘democratic materialism’ which implies a universality to our experiencing and understanding of the world, and a rejection of such if not adhering to these conditions.

While reading ‘Mar a chonnac-sa Éire’, I realised the advantage I had at understanding the language, the context of the journey taken and so I got a glimpse at a truth of a place in time. In this series of work I approach painting with the question of what it can reveal about place and time, through my corporal experience of it. Landscapes have been formulated from individual recorded descriptions, photographs taken on cycling trips around the Brussels region, vacuum packed cubes of rags and a tilted

head of Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, transition and endings. Figures appear, disappear and emerge from the work and call upon the spectator to bring these into being, avoiding representation in favour of abstraction.