Author: stinasandstrm

Galway International Arts Festival | 2019

Galway International Arts Festival | 2019

For the 2019 edition of Galway International Arts Festival, 126 Artist-run Gallery presents “Reforming” a duo exhibition by acclaimed Irish artist Diana Copperwhite and emerging Irish artist Ciara Barker. Reforming presents an exhibition infused with colour which explores notions of reality, abstraction and our sense of space, while placing two artists at different stages of career together. Admission is free and all are welcome.

“Copperwhite’s work focuses on how the human psyche processes information, and looks at the mechanisms of how we formulate what is real. With her work, she is fully aware that such realities may only hold validity for an instant, and that we are constantly processing and changing what we logically hold as experience and memory. Layering fragmented sources that range from personal memory to science, from media and internet to personal memory, Copperwhite’s canvases become worlds in which the real is unreal and this unreality is in a constant state of reforming.”-Noel Kelly, Director of Visual Artist Ireland, (2011)

  • “Anatomy of time 3”

The wall print (Anatomy of time 3) is made using footage from mobile phone cameras sent by anonymous individuals and some friends in Galway. Taking 30 seconds as my only que, I looked and responded to the short films by quickly drawing the contours and shapes of fleeting images seen to create a composite of abstract pattern. This pattern was then taken, photographed and blown up to creat a 21 foot long x12 foot tall digital print. Essentially taking the tradition of mural painting and bringing its epic proportions back down to the mobile phone.

Diana Copperwhite (b. 1969, Ireland) lives and works in Dublin and New York. Recent solo exhibitions include Driven by Distraction, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin (2016), Depend on the Morning Sun, Thomas Jaeckal Gallery, New York (2016) and A Million and One Things Under the Sun, Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin (2015). Selected group exhibitions include Last Picture Show w/Mary Heilmann, Chris Ofili, Danny Rolph, Vanessa Jackson, Elio Rodriguez, Jill Levine, Rebecca Smith, Thomas Jaeckel Gallery, New York (2017) and Virtú, inc. Picasso, Giacometti, Henry Moore, Elizabeth Magill and Sean Scully at the Hunt Museum, Limerick, Ireland (2017). Copperwhite’s work is held in numerous public and private collections including: the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Arts Council of Ireland, Limerick City Gallery of Art, Office of Public Works, Contemporary Irish Art Society, Highlanes Municipal Art Gallery, Mariehamn Stadbiblioteque, Aland (Finland), Dublin Institute of Technology and The President of Ireland.

Crooked orbit | Kevin Kavanagh | Dublin | 2017

Crooked orbit | Kevin Kavanagh | Dublin | 2017

01.06 – 01.07 2017

‘As is well known, the word ‘orbit’ refers to a set route or path around a given point: we on earth orbit the sun, just as the moon orbits us. Perhaps less known, though, is that the word is etymologically coupled with a distinct sense of the optical: from a fourteenth century French word for ‘eye socket’. Seeing, in this understanding, is always underscored by a sense of movement or voyaging: when we look at someone or something, we simultaneously tread a track around it. Perhaps we come close to this object, but we don’t get to touch it. [continued below]

I kept this double meaning in mind when thinking about Diana Copperwhite’s recent paintings. In this latest exhibition, Crooked Orbit, these are large and at least initially discordant works. It seems as though no colour has been left aside, from lurid fuchsias and cobalt blues, to neon yellow and swatches of minty green. Recurring throughout the canvases, there is also a gradient effect achieved by loading the brush with different shades of paint; and this has a consequence of suggesting that these paintings have almost outgrown the tools of their creation, those tools then being forced to convey, through colour, as much as they possibly can. Sometimes these gradient interventions are vertical and regular; at others, they are less uniform, cast in a halting semi-circle or upturned ‘u’. Throughout, they act to create the impression of space within the paintings: in one, a narrow swathe of grey, pink and white, has the look of an outstretched arm, a slight sag in the middle where the elbow could be; in another, a flat vertical plane of what looks like four gradient drags cuts a dint of architectural space. But, even when working in unison, each of these is just one gesture, loaded to capacity and worked until it dissipates, the paint run out or stopped short from further decline. Representation is at most, never quite; cast as it is though a series of distinct marks, the whole remains fragmentary, gestured towards but never quite pinned down’.

Extracted from Awkward Angle of Perception, by Rebecca O’Dwyer.

Last Picture Show | New York | 2017

Last Picture Show | New York | 2017

532 GALLERY THOMAS JAECKEL
May 11th – Jun 29th New York, 532 West 25th Street
Opening Reception: Thursday, May. 11th, 6pm -8am

PRESS RELEASE

there is no harm in repeating a good thing
-Plato

An exhibition of work which posits the idea that creativity exists in not knowing, maybe the answer is “I can’t o on, I’ll go on”. Risk is imperative, but we still know very little about the potential of what works and why. The pendulum has always swung between abjection and elation. Qualities such as tenderness and humour connect this ensemble, a conversation often overlooked in favour of what can be read or justified. An exhibition showing a particular group of artists, who look to possess these qualities, inhabit new and old at the same time. History is apparent in a show like this but so is the future through the prism of the present.

The title refers to the Peter Bogdanovich film of 1971 “The Last Picture Show” which was shot entirely in black and white, harking back to an earlier time (again old and new) populated with a soundtrack of pop songs and presenting actors including Cybil Shepherd and Cloris Leachman at different stages of their respective careers in dialogue together. There seems no reason for the town they inhabit in the film (set in 1951) to exist, but the directness and simplicity of the depiction creates a space which allows for dialogue and a kind of transgression to occur.

https://www.artsy.net

Depend on the Morning Sun | NY | 2016

Depend on the Morning Sun | NY | 2016

532 Gallery Thomas Jaeckel

Oct 27th, 2016 – Jan 28th, 2017

PRESS RELEASE

Thomas Jaeckel Gallery is pleased to present Diana Copperwhite’s “Depend on the Morning Sun”. The exhibition features new large oils on canvas. This is the artist’s third solo exhibition at the gallery. The exhibition effectively extends the continuum of abstractions in color that have engaged the artist in recent years. Fusing schematic shapes and fragments, her apparent abstractions recall a flash of connections through time, or maybe a glimpse of switching of identities, or the way an interior, or an external, space may be seen via moving digitized images. We are drawn by the vivid light and color of her paintings and are left with a test in our bringing an identification of her imagery.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a monograph with an essay by Gail Levin.“Diana Copperwhite makes big bold oil paintings that excite and stir our twenty-first-century perceptions. Her compelling images are both complex and energetic. She is never at a loss for the impulse to paint, though she is coy about revealing her concerns, often throwing the viewer just a few clues and leaving a lot of room for the imagination. She creates an exquisite tension between abstraction and figuration or representation of any kind. She appears to tease out this tension to hold our interest, as we both take in the visual splendor of her paintings and try to fathom what they are about.” 

Excerpts from Essay. Gail Levin PhD, Professor of Art History, American Studies, and Women Studies at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of CUNY.Diana Copperwhite, born 1969, lives and works in Dublin. Copperwhite has exhibited widely in Ireland and abroad. Recent solo exhibitions include Driven by Distraction, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, 2016, A Million and One Things Under the Sun, Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin, 2015, Shadowland, Thomas Jaeckel, New York, 2014, solo presentations at PULSE NY, 2015 where she was nominated for the PULSE prize and at Volta NY, 2013. Copperwhite was awarded the AIB Art Prize in 2007 and her work is held in many important public collections, including the Office of Public Works, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Arts Council of Ireland, Limerick City Gallery of Art, Dublin Institute of Technology as well as private collections in Ireland, across Europe and in the United States.

artsy.net

 
 

A Million and One Things Under the Sun | Dublin 2015

A Million and One Things Under the Sun | Dublin 2015

Read full conversation with Helen O’Leary at Two Coats of Paint

‘World is Suddener Than We Fancy It’, written by Ingrid Lyons, a writer and artist based in Dublin.

02.04-25.04 2015

“…Copperwhite’s paintings follow a logic of their own, they are recycled and they grow out of one another by remaining susceptible to the materiality of paint. She often interjects with obstacles that she brings to bare on the paintings in a way that encourages them to define their autonomy. This approach allows for accidents to happen yet these accidents are staged purposefully to allow the paintings to escape from her grasp. In this regard they have a character and vibrancy that evidence the pursuit of an epiphany, whereby the painting surprises the artist as often as the artist exacts change upon the painting. She is a painter who is fully taken up with the act of painting and the materiality of paint.

A latent interest in physics also defines the work, more specifically the speed of light in vacuum as a universal physical constant. The paintings express an interest in light, in colour and in the interlude between what the observer looks at and what is being observed. The speed of light as a concept suggests that by the time you see something, it’s not what you are looking at anymore, as though a buffer zone exists between the physical and the optical. This phenomenon represents a slippage, or a space in between that can’t be accessed and denial of access to such a space prompts the imagination into vistas that are exponentially larger than any possible truth. Perhaps this proposed space does not exist at all. The pursuit of such a place engenders possibilities, and these possibilities diminish through discovery. This example is analogous to all human attempts in grasping at truth.”

Extracted from ‘World is Suddener Than We Fancy It’

– Ingrid Lyons is a writer and artist based in Dublin

The Mind was Dreaming. The World was the Dream

DIANA COPPERWHITE, MICHAEL KALMBACH, HIRAKI SAWA

Curated by Jacqui McIntosh Solstice Arts Centre, Navan, Ireland 19 January – 25 February 2012 Design – Lorenzo Tonti Text and Photography – Jacqui McIntosh Printing and Reproduction – Impress Printing Works Edition: 200 Copies ISBN 978-0-9560538-2-4 Published by Kevin Kavanagh (2012)

Diana Copperwhite: Chance as Choice

Written by: Colm Toibin

The studio is a cluttered room in Temple Bar Studios; the noise and chatter from the square and the street below seem oddly part of the small universe which Diana Copperwhite has created in this space. She allows the world into her paintings in ways which are at times muffled and subtle and covered over, subsumed into the image, made part of a surface which is capable of immense expression…

Read more…Diana Copperwhite –Chance as Choice