Artists

Rian Coughlan

Press release

Private view: 17 January, 6-8pm.

The work of Rian Coughlan is concerned with the collection and manipulation of mediated imagery. Sourced from a diverse range of arenas and eras, these images often sit uncomfortably together. Marked by a sense of physicality in paint, as well as a striking fusion of addition and subtraction, Coughlan’s densely layered oeuvre underlines the artist’s fascination with the evolution of painting.

His work is created by overlaying image and paint, each unique layer representing a distinct history in terms of content, form and materiality, resulting in a gestural surface burnished with shimmering strata of thick pigment that resemble smooth slabs, their facture near tangible to the viewer. The surfaces of the works trigger chromatic vibrations and optical illusions. Multiple perspectives and after-images emerge and recede with tributaries feeding and looping back into one another, giving rise to a new and complex visual lexicon, rooted in the canon of abstract painting.

Coughlan’s recent work reveals a distinct engagement with composition, agency and intention, confronting abstract expressionistic tropes with the use of different effects, procedures and materials. The layering of pigment in the paintings complicates the distinction between areas of colour and line, generating a sense of uncertainty to the identity of each.

Surfaces absorb light and reflect it unevenly, keeping the viewer mobile via optical instability and a lack of figure-ground distinctions. While abstract, the works are still illusionistic, and shadows, gradations of colour, a sense of movement, variations between light and darkness, rippling waves, canvas grain, and reverberating contours are evoked in the undulating palette and seismic surfaces of the artist’s multi-faceted practice.