On Constructs

The work espouses a minimalist strategy for developing ideas about landscape and architecture, within the formalist structures of two dimensions. Whether strictly speaking two dimensional perspectives can be invoked when discussing the work is rather ambiguous, as the reliefs, constructed of wood and paper, have specific references to kites and other man-made sculptural forms.

The immediate simplicity of the objects is belied by the synthetic, almost constructivist nature of the work. Where the surfaces reflect a painterly attitude towards finish and mimetics, the manifest nature of the wooden forms belie a simplistic comprehension.

These are in the nature of being totems, as sculptural forms, which are inherently balanced in themselves, yet evoke through the surface tensions of paper and paint an extra discourse. This discourse resonates within the parameters of architectural structures. The reflective nature of the primed and painted surfaces reflect the inherent structural mode of the wooden reliefs as sculptural, three dimensional illusions.

This dichotomy between illusion as a three-dimensional prerogative of illuminated architectural resonances, integrates with the painterly notion of surfaces as a skin, or identifying element of the overall object. The traditional aspects of painting as illusion, within the constraints of perspective are to a certain extent alluded to, yet dissolved by the fragile sensibility of the objects. When the measurements and scale of an object has  developed a new fulcrum of identity by its optical construence , the whole appears to have sustained its nature, while dissolving the elements of that nature in a meditative moment of spatial disintegration.

I do not mean by this that the work dissolves the boundaries between form and surface, as these elements are structurally so idealized by the forms themselves. There does however, appear to be a shift of perspective gaze, the highly considered constructions appearing to lessen their weight, while the ephemeral paper surfaces allude to an inherent sense of lightness.

To return to the metaphor of the kite, the Asiatic construction of wood and paper seems to reflect in its aeronautical ease the shift between the constructed mechanism, and the transference of such objects into figments of light and illusion when flown upon the air. This dichotomy of form and use somehow extenuates the aspirations of these works, while articulating a specific physical presence.

                                       Ciaran Bennett 2005

former President of Association of Irish Arts Critics