In the first in a new series of solo presentations moving away from historical buildings to contemporary industrial settings, Berlin Opticians Gallery presents The Nose Knows – a solo exhibition by invited artist Mark McGreevy.
McGreevy’s paintings are known for their texture and vibrancy of colour. In this exhibition his palette is full of pinks, reds, bright blues and greens.
The colours are often applied in blocks that occupy separate, designated areas, as if the paint brush followed the lines of a colouring book, a territory previously scribbled in with a crayon. There is a determination to his painterly gesture: the brushstrokes read as thick and expressive.
The world portrayed by McGreevy is simultaneously enticing and estranged. He captures the mundane and utilitarian aspects of life or residual spaces, which otherwise can go unnoticed.
Those moments and places are often recorded in his sketch-books as a visual prompter, adding to a collage of ideas that inform his painting process. Thus, the reality offered by McGreevy is never fully defined and comes across as a tweaked and twisted version of what we experience.
There is a sense of out-of-placeness and incompatibility within the picture plane, that corresponds with the awkwardness and unease of the subject-matter he depicts.
A graduate of Ulster University, Belfast, McGreevy has previously had exhibitions at RHA, The Lab Gallery, Draiocht, Dublin; The Third Space Gallery, Belfast; The Crawford Gallery, Cork and Katzen Art Centre, Washington, DC among others. He is currently based in Belfast.
Feature Image: Mark McGreevy, Analogue Dog, 2019, Oil on canvas, artist’s frame, 90 x 120 cm
