IRL, in real life, is a common internet abbreviation used to indicate that something has been experienced in real life, not just virtually. But what is real life and isn’t virtual life part of it? Is something real when it is seen with your own eyes and fake through a lens?
These are questions that became all the more important last year after the world came to a standstill and everything took place online, whether birthday parties, theater performances or even exhibition visits. With Zoom vernissages, NFTs and 3D tours, the art world has adapted to the new circumstances, but artists all over the world have also incorporated the new situation into their art in one way or another. Either their own working methods have intensified, their focus has changed, or an escape from the present has been created.
In the IRL exhibition, Irish-based artists Cecilia Bullo, Amanda Doran and George Warren show how the new reality of the last one and a half years is reflected in their art.
Cecilia Bullo is a classical, mainly sculpturally trained artist who concentrates on the creation of mixed-media installations. She works with contrasting visual elements, examining material processes and their history.
Her works focus on various symbols and objects (e.g. amulets or relics) that are placed in the context of social issues. The objects are associated with healing powers or magical properties and are primarily read in a feminist-political context. Bullo is interested in the role of women as victims and their political bodies, both in mythology and in the present.
In her latest works, Bullo focuses in particular on the theme of uprooting. As an example of this, she uses an aloe vera plant that is still used today for its botanical healing properties. Part of this rhizome plant, which came from her family’s garden in Italy, was uprooted, transported and transplanted to her adopted country of Ireland. Bullo has a migrant background and was herself “uprooted”. As such, she explores symbols and signifiers that are directly linked to her mixed heritage. She looks at how ritual practice can adapt and change in a different context, with reference to cultural challenges faced by people from migrant backgrounds, particularly women.
Amanda Doransis concerned with her daily surroundings and encounters. In the last half-century, however, her focus has shifted from habitual rituals, eccentricities and quirks to discomfort, death and rebirth. She sees the themes as a cathartic outlet, addressing the peculiarities and unpredictability of recent times. The artist reflects death, destruction and despair by depicting people in alternative cultures, such as the tattoo, punk or metal scene. Everyday situations have been transformed into dark and somewhat sinister images that show the cycle from death to rebirth, but with a dash of dark humor. Life itself is a cycle of recurring phases that are confronted, fought and destroyed in order to return to light-heartedness.
Doran focuses on physical details that would also catch the viewer’s eye in real life. With their thick and coarse style and their exuberant and direct way of painting, the figures appear obscure, but also aesthetically pleasing, with their artfully tattooed skin. The thick, uncontrollable, sometimes chaotic layers of color reflect the artist’s momentary feelings, those of an uncontrollable present.
Intuitive painting that comes from within is George Warren‘s approach. A rough plan helps the artist to overcome any hesitation and create a painting with a quick and sweeping application of paint. His works are somewhere between figuration and abstraction.
In his latest series, Warren follows a pictorial concept. He creates small narratives that follow a familiar narrative, that of the fighting game. The fighting figures are based on games from retro consoles and have only one purpose: to fight. The player actually controls the characters’ behavior, but Warren freezes the characters on the screen and the player becomes the viewer. However, the on-screen dialog between the fighters remains, through punches, air kicks and fireballs, even the partial disappearance of the loser. The poured paint and paint drops act as emulation, a process that replicates programs so they can run on incompatible devices or equipment. It seems as if virtual reality is still present in the frame of the “screen”.
Supported by:
Culture Ireland
Embassy of Ireland, Germany