At
the end of the third week of August 2008, Carol and I went to IMMA - where we saw
three very interesting exhibitions. Order,
Desire, Light was the first show we looked at. It consisted of about 250
contemporary drawings - by various world-renowned artists. It was early in the
day and I was not in a critical frame of mind. I felt tired and stoned. So I
found it enjoyable nonsense. There were strong works by Sigmar Polke, Chris
Ofili, Albert Oehlen, Miquel Barceló, Mark Bradford, and Raymond Pettibon.
However most of the other works were total rubbish. Many of the frames - made
for these notes on paper – required greater labour and required more skill to
make. I told Carol that I had burnt drawings better than most of these feckless
doodles.
In
the midst of all this PO-MO child’s play - the Charcoal drawings of William
Kentridge stood out a mile. His muscular drawing of ancient ruins was beautiful
– if somewhat conventional and boring. However, his other drawing on torn and
glued sheets from a book made Carol and I snort with disgust. We had both
become sick of the sight of drawings on torn up book pages – it was a gimmick
long past its sell by date.
Then
we saw paintings, photographs and videos by the German/Brazilian artist Janaina
Tschape. I thought her photographs and videos were generic art world junk. She
posed in funny cellular and biomorphic outfits in the jungle and in the sea. I
had seen its type done a hundred times already. However, she was saved in my
estimation by some beautiful abstract oil paintings - which again played with
vegetative, botanical and microscopic forms in a kind of twenty-first century
parody of Gustav Klimt’s semi-abstract ornamentation.
Finally, we saw a show of works
inspired by Africa by the Spanish painter Miquel Barceló. The show included;
ink drawings, watercolours, oil paintings, pottery and sculptures - all
inspired by his numerous vacations and residencies in West Africa and Mali in
particular since 1988. To be honest I had not seen anything like it in Dublin
for decades. It all reeked of the 1980s and not in a very good way.
I
found it hard to write about such mediocrity. Barceló’s work was worthy,
skilful, inventive and sincere – yet at the same time, it lacked true
originality, feeling or vision. Although I delighted seeing expressive, well
draw and sensually painted works – most of it had a second-hand quality to it.
Barceló’ was a wriggly and spritely draughtsman – somewhat in the vein of
Tiepolo and was an adventurous manipulator of paint. However I was continually
reminded of better painters who had undoubtedly influenced him like; Jean
Fautrier, Wols, Jean Dubuffet, Joseph Beuys, Jannis Kounellis, Julian Schnabel,
Sandro Chia, Francisco Clemente and Enzo Cucchi. Overall, I had the impression
of seeing yet another playboy painter with a facile talent and too much money
for his own good.