Sean Shanahan Gallery in Milan, Building Gallery

to Editorial board written on 01/15/2023
Categories: Exhibitions / Threads: Milan – Contemporary art

The Building Gallery displays a selection of monochrome paintings by Sean Shanahan through which the artist reflects on themes of death and immortality. From February 9 to March 25, 2023.

From February 9 to March 25, 2023 Building Gallery In Milan presents the exhibition Sean Shanahan. Heart slicesEdited by Luca Massimo Barbero. The show springs from a personal and intimate reflection of Sean Shanahan (Dublin, 1960) on a topic the death Based onimmortality. A selection of paintings included in file Site context It features a powerful stage projected along the three floors of the gallery. The main themes are The unexpected, expectation and surprisethrough which three different readings of the relationship between painting, display space, and real space are proposed.

Figuratively and concretely breaking through the boundaries imposed by the structural elements of the exhibition, the works derived from them monochrome palettethey actually inhabit three-dimensional space in a fixation on the fixation frontier.

Support use in MDF (Medium intensity fire), stylistic characteristic of the artist, helps to reinforce the ambiguous objectivity of the work, suggesting a perception of painting as a concrete element that needs to provide space and not just occupy it. until the oil colourscattered in flat monochromatic backgrounds and absorbed by the wood material, become an integral part of the painting rather than a simple covering of the surface.

The exhibition is divided into three closely interconnected moments and is made up of a series of unexpected situations, in which the environment is shaped and modeled by the artist to allow the audience to perceive the works from new and different perspectives.

On the ground floor, the works interact with the exhibition space thanks to A Dramatic and conceptual use of color. From the mutual interference between the works and the wall,A terrible dance‘, which gives its name to the five large panels that regularly punctuate the exhibition space. The visual fulcrum is located in the central aperture that characterizes all the works on display and which, with its presence and absence, becomes the real leitmotif of the exhibition. This is a square aperture, whose visibility is accentuated by the chamfered edges Deliberately left untouched, it becomes the focal point on which one is invited to focus, before being able to expand one’s gaze to the entire painting and to the immersive context in which it is an integral part.

The gallery path continues on the first floor with Hysterical consequences. In the traditional context of a “white cube” is a faces image To impose itself, establishing a dynamic relationship with the white wall and the surrounding environment. Three great works entitled flop (2022), float (2022) e A flight (2022), featured in the exhibition space. Unexpected hues of oil colors absorbed by the MDF backing, which the artist worked to be an actively visible structural part, radiate into the white space of the first floor.

The third and final moment of the itinerary is freely inspired by the Latin phrase “sub specie aeternitatis” and suggests a direct reference to the concept of immeasurable Based on everlasting.

For info: www.building-gallery.com

Photo: Sean Shanahan, Dance Macabre (1) (2022; oil on MDF, 180 x 180 cm) Photo by Luca Cassonato