Alan Doyle - Front Room Gallery
Doyle is a self taught artist who lives in Wicklow , Ireland. His charcoal works on paper, inhabited by elongated figures and animals are drawn from his subconscious and provide a portal into a world that exists beyond time and just below the surface. This is Doyle’s first exhibition in the U.S. His work is represented in the UK by the Henry Boxer Gallery, home of artists Madge Gill & Adolph Wolfi and other European Art Brute masters.
Here are excerpts from an article written by Colin Rhodes, Hunan Normal University, for a French Publication.
Alan Doyle's recent black and white drawings seem to emanate from a primal realm. His figures and creatures are autochthons revealed for twenty-first century eyes. They are very much of the earth. They belong absolutely to the landscapes they occupy and from which they seemingly arise. The artist achieves all this with a striking economy of means – sometimes even pictorial clues to the places his figures inhabit are absent, and yet the viewer is led to believe, somehow, in their existence in an activated space that forever hovers at the ill-defined boundary between the mundane visual world and unformed realm of eternal form-making.
Each drawing characteristically contains only a limited number of participants, ranging from human and animal figures to hybrid creatures, that only intensify the sense of an ancient psychic elsewhere.
Doyle was born in 1984 in County Meath, Ireland, an area well known for its prehistoric monuments. The third of four children, he grew up mostly in County Wicklow, south of Dublin, which he still calls home today. His schooling was disrupted at times because of ill-health, and he was unable to fully participate in the kinds of physical play in which most children engage. These solitary periods actually fed his early discovery of drawing and making things. Time spent in artistic pursuits gave form and structure to the passing hours and enabled him to engage in acts of constant creation and recreation of imaginative worlds that reflected his developing personal vision.
Although he applied to study art, his disrupted schooling had left him without the qualifications deemed necessary for his preferred course. He enrolled on another, but soon dropped out when he realized it would not deliver the things he wanted from art making. Disheartened by it all, for a few years he concentrated instead on a regular job. But the call to make art and music was irresistible. He gave up the security of paid employment and from that time on devoted himself full time to the creative vocation.
The mystery in Doyle’s drawings is reinforced by his reluctance to give them titles. This is not a result of any desire on his part to obfuscate, but rather to allow individual viewers scope to interrogate and interpret images in the ways in which they might speak as directly to them as they do him. “I’ve always been apprehensive about leading the viewer too much,” he tells us, “I like to leave room for interpretation and for people to bring their own ideas to the work.” There is, to be sure, a certain organicist belief here in the communicative power of his drawings: “I love words and poetry,” he says, “And I read and write. But I like the images to speak for themselves.”
Nandini Bagla Chirimar ‘Unwritten Spaces’ - Main Gallery
In the last few years most of us have spent an unusual amount of time within our living spaces. As I stayed in my home constantly, I realized that along with the written floor plans and physical objects, there exists another, more complex ‘unwritten space’. This could be in the form of different abstract configurations of the walls, historical remnants, or undefined spaces created by emotions within the walls. To really understand this space, I turned to my work to visually examine the architectural lines, furniture and objects in spaces, as well as the thoughts, relationships and histories which existed within them.
In this exhibit I bring together explorations of this unwritten space, in the form of new pieces and works from over the years. Woodblock prints and etchings, along with experimental works using translucencies, layering, cutting, gluing and gold leaf are central to this collection. Pencil drawings on Japanese paper speak of the delicacy of human feelings using detailed line and tones.
The sculptural component includes cast handmade paper pieces which convey dimensionality and purity in both physical and emotional spaces. The object based pieces are a slice of practical life, while thread based works speak of the complex ties within human relationships.
Nandini Bagla Chirimar grew up in Jaipur, India, and studied at the College of Art, New Delhi, Cornell University (BFA, Drawing and Painting), Maryland Institute College of Art (MFA, Painting) and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She learned printmaking from Arun Bose and Vijay Kumar, and spent four years in Tokyo studying Japanese woodblock printing with Taika Kinoshita.
Chirimar was awarded the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant in 2016 and the Wave Hill Winter Workspace Program in 2019. Her work has been exhibited at many international venues including Twelve Gates Arts, Philadelphia; Queens Museum of Art, New York; Gallery Espace, New Delhi; Ganges Gallery, Kolkata; Allen Gallery, New York; CWAJ Print Shows, Tokyo and fairs Art Basel OVR, India Art Fair, Delhi Contemporary and Slick Art Fair, Paris.
Chirimar works extensively with drawing, printmaking and mixed media techniques, and her work is part of many collections including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, US Department of State and RPG Group. She lives in New York City, and teaches at the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop and Manhattan Graphics Center.
“My work draws on thoughts and images that populate my mind as I go through my daily life as a mother, daughter, homemaker and artist living in New York. I explore things that become significant in our lives, and how/if they start to define our identity. Autobiographical elements are used to touch upon larger phenomenon including globalization, relationships, memories, grief, death and life defining events.
“Through my work, I seek answers to questions like how we become who we are - is it genetic, environmental, circumstantial or purely coincidental? How much space in our mind is occupied by memories versus the present? To that end, I explore places and people which have been important for us, as well as our present physical space, thoughts, emotions and how external events effect our personal lives.
“Researching everyday objects for their function in our life, and their social significance, is part of my process. I draw from maps, nature, architectural details, rooms, drawers, household objects, clothing, books, old letters, and miscellaneous belongings. I constantly take photographs to document what I see, which then become an important reference point for the work.
“Works on paper, including detailed drawing and printmaking form a large part of my artistic practice. I draw and print extensively on Japanese paper using pencils, pens, inks, paints, etching, chine collé, and woodblock processes. The translucencies in Japanese paper allow for experimental printing and layering techniques. Other mediums I work with include thread, handmade paper, object based and digital work.”