THE COMPLEX PRESENTS AN EXHIBITION OF NEW WORKS BY PAUL MCGRANE
I have known Paul for a long time now. I have spent more hours in his studio talking to him about his work than
any other artist I've worked with. Most of these studio visits have been casual and void of any agenda. I mention
this because the relationship I have with his paintings is quite informal and relaxed as a result. They are just there
when I am, and so I have spent a lot of time in their presence. Unintentionally getting to know them.
I've seen Paul’s painting practice veer in many directions; I would enter his studio, see a painting and get very
enthusiastic, only to come back the next day and find it painted over. It would always sway back to a familiar
trajectory though. My conversations with Paul over the years, and my observations in his studio gave me a behind
the scenes view of him testing: adding, subtracting, destroying – In my experience, artists often add ‘bells and
whistles’ before discovering that they usually resonate a little too loud.
These activities for Paul, in recent times, seem to have found a comfortable resting point. The bells and whistles
have been tossed and the fundamental qualities that provided weight to all of his paintings have been revalued –
colour, texture, shape, light. Additional embellished thoughts around his paintings that once floated loudly, have
slowly swung down to the canvas and flattened into still pools of silence. This defogging seems to have resulted
in a zoomed out holistic perspective – I feel like each painting has become a vast plain, and they all relate to
each other in some fractured geographical way.
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Paul McGrane (b.1991, Dublin) is an artist & curator working in Dublin, Ireland. He graduated from Technological
University Dublin in 2015 with a BA in Fine Art.
His practice focuses predominantly on painting and sculpture. His interests lie in public spaces such as places of
worship, stadiums and sensory rooms. Nostalgia guides the creation of his work, drawing from personal
memories rooted in family and place. McGrane’s paintings are expressed using various facets of abstraction –
colour, shape, light, motif. He uses a process of layering thin washes of pigment repeatedly over each other. The
paint is then brushed in long vertical or horizontal strokes. This process can often lead to areas of the surface
being overworked, in return the pigment then merges together and counter intuitively erases.
Recent awards include Hang Tough Solo Exhibition Award, Dublin, and Rua Red Winter Open Award (2019),
Dublin. Recent exhibitions include Páipéar (2022) at Hang Tough Gallery, Dublin, (2021) at Rua Red, Dublin, and
Winter Open Exhibition (2019) at Rua Red, Dublin.
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Exhibition statement by Mark O’Gorman – Curator / Producer of Visual Arts at The Complex.
Exhibition documented by Lee Welch
Proudly supported by The Arts Council of Ireland and Dublin City Council.
