Kevin Kavanagh is proud to present Joyful Mysteries an exhibition of new paintings by David Quinn.
Joyful Mysteries – Quinn’s first solo exhibition in almost 10 years, comprises a contemplative tone poem of paintings set in a world of crystalline light and detachment.
As often with Quinn the point of departure is the porous interface between us and everything we feel that is not us. Light, land, water, flesh; all made of the same stuff – as we always knew it was, but never quite felt to be true.
Presenting a catalogue of quietly charged moments and events; each painting’s surface becomes an instrument of almost binary measurements. Value is noted and assigned literally point by point; fields of nodes drilled directly into the panels create woodblock-like surfaces which underpin the enclosed intimacies depicted. At times re-imagining art-historical tropes, meaning and pictorial significance is explored and delighted in. These are paintings as shifting substrates, accepting and activating the projections and values we as viewers assign, playing a little with our expectations while holding to the light the moment in question – which as ever, is at once familiar and unknowable.
David Quinn is an artist living and working in Mayo. He graduated with a BA in Fine Art from the National College of Art and Design in 1991.
Quinn has a longstanding relationship with Kevin Kavanagh. He has exhibited six solo shows at the gallery, most recently Hungry Rock (2010), and participated in numerous group shows. Quinn has shown work in institutions country-wide, including the Fenton Gallery, Cork (2007), the Hamilton Galery, Sligo (2011) and the RHA, Dublin (2004, 2017). His work has also been exhibited internationally in Glasgow (Leabhair Mor na, 2003) and Tallahasse(Works on Paper, LeMoyne Art Foundation, 2003).
Quinn was the recipient of the Royal Dublin Society Taylor Art Award in 1991 and the Golden Fleece Merit Award in 2007. Public collections include the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Irish Embassy Washington D.C, the European Parliament (Brussels) and the Office of Public Works.
