Pádraig Timoney: The Deedle Eye

Andrew Kreps Gallery presents “The Deedle Eye”, Pádraig Timoney’s fourth exhibition with the gallery.

Diverse in its approach and materials, Pádraig Timoney’s work blends and mutates styles as he moves between painting, photography, and installation. Despite the visually distinct results, at the work’s core is a focused inquiry into the mechanics of images. Timoney conversely works in both directions – creating new images from abstractions (the captivating results of processes achieved in the studio), or rebuilding them part-by-part from photographs or observation. In each, he acknowledges the inherent flaws of these constructions, from the faultiness of recognition, the errors of translation, and further, the subjectivity of both viewers and the artist.

These in turn become generative openings in Timoney’s work as they are distanced from their original context. The images exist within thrilling, new visual constellations, allowing for the introduction of artifice and illusion, and the question of not only what they depict, but why? Each work records an index of decisions that determine its final state, materially and cognitively, displaying a history that is intentionally left open-ended. Figuration appears to hover only a hair away from abstraction, as if the movement of a line would cause one to collapse into the other. The narrowing of this gap suggests that the works’ initial disparate appearance may lead to an alternate understanding of their connections; a net that widens only to close anew, though what’s caught within it is left for the viewer to decide.

Padraig Timoney lives and works in Brooklyn. His work is currently on view as part of Collected by Thea Westreich Wagner and Ethan Wagner, Centre Pompidou, Paris through March 17, 2017. Recent solo exhibitions include the “Scrambled Eggs Salute The Trifle”, The Modern Institute, Glasgow, 2016, “Planxty Milano“, Galleria Raucci/Santamaria, Milan, 2016 “a lu tiempo de…,” curated by Alessandro Rabottini, Museo Madre, Naples, 2014, and “Fontwell Helix Feely“, Raven Row, London, 2014.