| Press November 2010 |
"Wreath," 2005-06
“Ireland finally found a painter-draughtsman to match its writers,” the critic Peter Frank once wrote of Patrick Graham, born in the town of Mullingar in 1943. Unlike Shaw, Wilde and Joyce, who left their homeland for England or the Continent, the artist has remained a steadfast resident, working for decades in Dublin.
A child prodigy in drawing, Graham entered the city’s National College of Art at age 16 and, several years later, discovered the work of Emil Nolde—a galvanizing encounter that prompted him to eschew his youthful facility. “Nolde’s paintings,” he said, “subverted the whole notion of conventional skill.” When, after an incapacitating period of alcoholism, Graham began to make art again in 1974, he worked not in the vein of Nolde but in the tragic spirit of Grünewald and Goya.
Abstraction and figuration are fused in Graham’s mysterious, unsettling works. The diptych Wreath (2005-06), one of four large paintings in this show of recent work, is rendered in several grays with drips and slash marks in some areas. An unidentified red object at the bottom of the canvas seems to be rolling on the ground. Despite the presence of various words, including “wreath,” inscribed on the surface, the picture is primarily a landscape with a high horizon line and a dark hill, like the ones Graham used to climb as a child in County Westmeath.
Graham’s drawings (also large, as evidenced by the exhibition’s 22 examples) are fleet of touch and ambiguous in feeling. Human figures or fragments of bodies appear, along with veiled faces, birds, words and abstract marks. Often the paper is torn, crinkled and collaged. In Collateral Series (2009-10), three large photo lenses, mounted on tripods, and a figure, possibly operating a camera, focus on an orange dog. Above these elements floats the word “dog” in widely spaced red, yellow, blue and green letters, accompanied by the penciled inscription “memory of a dog.” The complex play with recollection, representation and reality calls to mind Joseph Kosuth’s installation One and Three Chairs (1965), featuring a chair positioned between a photograph of the same chair and a wall-text definition of the word “chair.” Several of the show’s drawings were from the “Deposition” series (2009-10), in which the artist refers to the transport of the body of Christ. In Graham’s view the spiritual and the material can merge in esthetic experience. In an interview in Dublin in 2005, he asserted: “Art really is a religious notion. And the function of art is to redeem us in some way.”
—Peter Selz
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| Gallery Profile
Founded in 1979, Jack Rutberg Fine Arts has presented major exhibitions of important Modern and Contemporary European and American artists. Since its inaugural exhibition featuring the works of Arshile Gorky and Hans Burkhardt, the gallery has continued to present museum-quality exhibitions placing contemporary paintings, sculpture, prints and drawings in historical context.
Established at its current La Brea Avenue location in 1981, Jack Rutberg Fine Arts has featured exhibitions by gallery artists Jordi Alcaraz, Hans Burkhardt, Patrick Graham, Reuben Nakian, Ruth Weisberg, Jerome Witkin, and Francisco Zuniga. In addition, the gallery has presented a wide range of solo exhibitions of major international artists including Kathe Kollwitz, Antoni Tapies, Arshile Gorky, Georges Rouault, Hundertwasser, George Herms, Max Weber, Alexander Calder and other significant 20th century artists.
Noteworthy thematic exhibitions presented by the gallery have included major surveys of German Expressionism, California Modern Art, Los Angeles Contemporary Art, as well as numerous group exhibitions.
The gallery is particularly noteworthy for its emphasis on education through its exhibitions, numerous lectures and panel discussions. Through those endeavors, Jack Rutberg Fine Arts is an important resource for established and beginning collectors, art historians, and museums internationally.
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Available Works Include:
Pierre Alechinsky
Karel Appel
John Baldessari
Hannelore Baron
Pierre Bonnard
Jonathan Borofsky
Alexander Calder
Marc Chagall
Willem De Kooning
Jim Dine
Max Ernst
Fantin-Latour
Oskar Fischinger
Helen Frankenthaler
Alberto Giacometti |
Joe Goode
Arshile Gorky
Francisco Goya
David Hockney
Edward Hopper
Hundertwasser
Kathe Kollwitz
Roy Lichtenstein
Man Ray
Roberto Matta
Peter Milton
Joan Miro
Henry Moore
Emil Nolde
Pablo Picasso |
Arnaldo Pomodoro
Robert Rauschenberg
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Larry Rivers
Auguste Rodin
Georges Rouault
Ed Ruscha
Rufino Tamayo
Antoni Tapies
Mark Tobey
Andy Warhol
Max Weber
Tom Wesselmann
Jerome Witkin
Francisco Zuniga |
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