1 The Wooden Building, Exchange Street Upper, Temple Bar, Dublin 2

David Begley
'AMKE TIEM:'

October 11 to November 4

Private opening: October 10 with guest speaker Dr. Margarita Cappock, Head of Collections, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane. A catalogue with an essay by the art historian, critic and lecturer at Trinity College Dublin Dr. Brenda Moore-McCann is available.

The Olivier Cornet Gallery is delighted to present 'AMKE TIEM:', an exhibition of new works by David Begley.

Throughout this intimate survey of the imaginative and varied aspects of David Begley's new works, a sense of wonder pervades.
At first glance one sees his distinctive use of colour, chiaroscuro, geometry, and varied surfaces employed to create spaces suggestive of the internal and external. These spaces are inhabited by animals, artefacts, orbs and figures in suspension, contortion, and agape. On closer inspection, not everything is as it seems, double-images appear and disappear. The seemingly simple 'Maktub' presents an image of an open book on which an organic mound rests or has sprouted. On the surface of this mound, bones and stones morph to become anthropomorphic and chimeric forms, within these forms springs and waterfalls erupt. Submerged at the peak of this mound a benign smiling head seems to be raised to a prism of light illuminating from above. Like many of Begley's hovering figures, his paintings occupy a space between what Dario Gamboni calls 'The Potential Image' and what Begley calls 'Possibility'.

Questions arise from his methods / images such as - Why is it he chooses to paint one image as a sequence of abstract passages punctuated by a form we may recognise, or make real by association, when we turn to the next painting and a carefully rendered lake rests below an azure sky, serrated by a vapour trail? Is he referring to the sublime or the environmental, or both? On a another work he moves from the delicate to the demonstrative in one swoop.

"Possibility in painting excites me. How an image can be made, how it appears to the mind or heart first, then it insists itself out of the paint. Be this in abstract or illusionist form. Forms must be born, otherwise they are borne. Forms appear from the awe of witnessing nature at its most extraordinary. Life, and what it throws upon our path in turn may also becomes the painted. Paint is a capricious matter and from accidents with it, wonderful possibilities arrive. For now at least, I choose to be open to where some of these 'accidents' lead me. Trusting chance as a process in painting, harnessing its impulses whilst filtering and teasing out its images can be perilous, but it is always interesting and even surprising. So on a day when I 'feel', I throw myself in. On a day when I 'think', I fester and explore. Not all paintings can move a viewer, or even wish to, but my hope is that some of my work can. If these works cannot all move the heart at least they may provoke the mind."

Begley's paintings need time and space to be viewed. A constant motif is light, how light seeks to be reflected, be that in the dramatic nocturnal works or the expansive and yet - tiny - landscapes. When he paints light we often find ourselves also looking at water, and perhaps wondering which is which.

At the root of many of these works is an inquisitive and often playful mind, contemplating the bigger questions: time, love, death, afterlife, fate.

When you come to see these works, bring an open mind and take a closer look.