Blizzard Heatwave
Eamon O’Kane
In his exhibition ‘Blizzard Heatwave’ Irish artist Eamon O’Kane presents a new series of painted animations,
which explore humankind’s relationship with nature. Using modernist architecture O’Kane sets it against a changing
environment and suggests the transience of the manmade in relation to the cycles of nature.
As curator and art critic Jacqui McIntosh has said ‘O’Kane’s paintings suggest that architecture will fail us,
that the fantasy is just that, and what’s more, the reality may do us more harm than good.’
In the animation ‘Rising Tide, after Frank Gehry’s house’ O’Kane presents an image of Gehry’s house slowly
being submerged in layers of paint until it is completely covered in blue. In ‘Blizzard Heatwave, after Richard
Neutra’s Kaufmann house’ the Neutra building engulfed by an extreme snowstorm which obliterates the image of
the house on a warm summers day. O’Kane’s animation ‘Seasonal overload, after The Eame’s house’ presents
the seminal building slowly being overtaken by a psychedelic mix of growth and decay from all the seasons.
'...while Eamon O'Kane's stop-motion paintings on video record the changes inflicted on Blanchardstown, a fast
growing area outside Dublin and the site of Ireland's biggest shopping centre, and illustrates his ongoing concerns
with art and architecture.'
Klaus Ottmann, 2007
'..O’Kanes paintings have always had a strong sense of form and spatiality – ideas and structures that lend
themselves easily to the three dimensional into sculpture and installation. The painting Drive Through (2007)
which depicts the back of a disused drive-in movie screen, could be seen to correlate with the 2007 installation
work Untitled (Seasons Blockbuster) in which a stop frame animated painting is projected onto a structure made
from discarded wood collected from the farmland where Christmas trees grow. As in Drive Through, the structure
mimics that of the drive-in movie screen – an object onto which dreams and aspirations are to be projected and
which, when we look more closely, reveals itself to be makeshift and unglamorous. It is an antidote to our fantasy,
the grime behind the glamour of Hollywood where starlets die of overdoses and spend very public stints in jail
or rehab. O’Kane draws attention to the artifice of the fantasy that is projected in which a building used as the
bookshop at the Venice Biennial, materializes from a simple line drawing and through a series of painted layers
travels throughout the seasons before de-materialising once more.'
Jacqui McIntosh, 2008
O’Kane recognizes the dichotomy in his own paintings where he seems to offer the possibilities of hope,
optimism and redemption with one hand while snatching them away with the other through his surreal, foreboding,
and threatening allusions. So for O’Kane, a home is not just a home, and green rolling hills are not just green
rolling hills -- they become symbols of a precarious scenario where utopia apparently is within reach but actually
is on the verge of being obliterated by a disturbing presence that seems to be lurking just beneath the surface.
--
www.eamonokane.com
Works in the online show
Selected works from the exhibition:
(The animations will be shown in the online exhibition)
‘Seasonal overload, after The Eame’s house’ Oil on canvas, 40 x 30 cm, and one Animated Video on DVD, 2009
‘Rising Tide, after Frank Gehry’s house’
Oil on canvas, 40 x 30 cm, and one Animated Video on DVD, 2009
‘Blizzard Heatwave, after Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann house’
Oil on canvas, 40 x 30 cm, and one Animated Video on DVD, 2009
‘Birch residence’
Oil on canvas, 40 x 30 cm, and one Animated Video on DVD, 2009
‘Windows, paintings, buildings, furniture’
Animated Video on DVD, 2009
‘Seasons Blockbuster’
Animated Video on DVD, 2006-2007
‘Regeneration’
Animated Video on DVD, 2006-2007
Biography
Eamon O'Kane has exhibited widely and is the recipient of many awards and scholarships including the Taylor Art
Award, The Tony O'Malley Award and a Fulbright Award. He has shown in exhibitions curated by Dan Cameron,
Lynne Cooke, Klaus Ottman, Salah M. Hassan, Jeremy Millar, Mike Fitzpatrick, Sarah Pierce, Jeanne
Greenberg-Rohatyn, Angelika Nollert, Yilmaz Dziewior and Apinan Poshyananda. He has taken part in EV+A,
Limerick, Ireland seven times including 2005 when he received an EV+A open award from Dan Cameron. In 2006
he was short-listed for the AIB Prize and received a Pollock Krasner foundation grant. O'Kane has had over forty solo
exhibitions including shows in Berlin, Frankfurt, Dublin, Zurich, New York, London and Copenhagen. He was
short-listed for the Jerwood Drawing Prize in London in 2007 . His artwork is in numerous public and private collections
worldwide including Deutsche Bank; Burda Museum, Baden Baden, Germany; Sammlung Südhausbau, Munich;
Limerick City Gallery; FORTIS; DUBLIN 98FM Radio Station; Microsoft; Bank of Ireland Collection; Irish
Contemporary Arts Society; Country Bank, New York; Office of Public Works; P.M.P.A. and Guardian Insurance;
Donegal County Library; UNIBANK, Denmark; NKT Denmark; HK, Denmark; Den Danske Bank, Denmark;
Sammlung Strack, Cologne, Germany; Letterkenny Institute of Technology; University Of Ulster, Belfast; Sammlung
Winzer, Coburg, Germany; British American Tobacco, Bayreuth, Germany; Aspen RE, London; Rugby Art Gallery
and Museum Collection. Eamon completed a three month residency at Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris in 2008.
O'Kane lives and works in Odense, Denmark and Co. Donegal, Ireland and is currently Visiting Research Fellow in
Fine Art at UWE in Bristol, UK.
Links:
http://www.eamonokane.com/eames_limerick/index.html
http://www.eamonokane.com/tour/london/index.html
http://www.eamonokane.com/tour/new_york/index.html
http://www.eamonokane.com/tour/berlin/index.html
http://www.eamonokane.com/work/2_mobile_museum_retrospective/mobile_retro.html
http://www.eamonokane.com/work/8_regeneration/regeneration.html
http://www.eamonokane.com/work/1_mobile_studio/mobile_studio.html |
