BLAISE DRUMMOND At Home in the New World
30 Oct 2010 - 15 Jan 2011
Blaise Drummond >At Home in the New World< 2010, oil and collage on canvas, 162 x 213 cm ©CONRADS Duesseldorf
The works of Blaise Drummond are experimental set-ups in the field of fine arts. Over the immaculate white of the canvas, his repertoire of set pieces are (re)distributed to create constantly changing arrangements. These are fragments of the utopias of the 19th and 20th century, of Romantic yearnings for nature and enlightened Modernity; these polarities confront each other and thus create new connections.
His works always oscillate between the failure of this Romantic idea and the discovery of a new beginning.
Influenced by Post-Minimalist concepts, Drummond cites the reduced, abstract language of the 1960s and 1970s and transforms this into a semantic system that now belongs to our general culture. Drummond refers to these roots using architecture by Le Corbusier and van der Rohe, for example, seeing them as locations of idealised human existence, which he longingly evokes in his pictures and simultaneously presents as an artificial construct.
In his pictures, the architectural icons of Modernity come together with drippings or decalcomania in plant form, profane objects or fragments of nature. Every element appears to float in an unsteady balance on the white of the canvas as if it had found its ideal location, if only for a moment. Then the artist permits the viewer to expose this completely staged harmony as a illusionary world. Drummond’s examination of the past does not produce any nostalgic déjà-vu; instead, it directs our gaze towards the present through the mirror of our history.
Blaise Drummond was born in Liverpool in 1967 and lives in County Longford, Ireland. He graduated from the National College of Art and Design (Dublin) in 1994 with First Class Honours in Fine Art Painting and Art History and received an M.A. in Fine Art Painting at the Chelsea College of Art in London four years later.
He has had solo exhibitions at Museum Haus Lange (Krefeld, Germany), the Castlefield Gallery (Manchester), Stedelijk Museum Aalst (Belgium), Musee de l’Abbaye Sainte-Croix, Les Sables d’Olonne and the Crawford Municipal Gallery of Art (Cork). He has also participated in group shows with the Ikon Gallery (Birmingham), Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin), the Bluecoat Gallery (Liverpool) and many more, and was selected twice for the John Moores exhibitions in the Walker Art Gallery (Liverpool) and in the ‘Utopias’ show at the Douglas Hyde Gallery (Dublin).
Further information : Helga Weckop-Conrads 49.177.3230720
www.galerieconrads.de
His works always oscillate between the failure of this Romantic idea and the discovery of a new beginning.
Influenced by Post-Minimalist concepts, Drummond cites the reduced, abstract language of the 1960s and 1970s and transforms this into a semantic system that now belongs to our general culture. Drummond refers to these roots using architecture by Le Corbusier and van der Rohe, for example, seeing them as locations of idealised human existence, which he longingly evokes in his pictures and simultaneously presents as an artificial construct.
In his pictures, the architectural icons of Modernity come together with drippings or decalcomania in plant form, profane objects or fragments of nature. Every element appears to float in an unsteady balance on the white of the canvas as if it had found its ideal location, if only for a moment. Then the artist permits the viewer to expose this completely staged harmony as a illusionary world. Drummond’s examination of the past does not produce any nostalgic déjà-vu; instead, it directs our gaze towards the present through the mirror of our history.
Blaise Drummond was born in Liverpool in 1967 and lives in County Longford, Ireland. He graduated from the National College of Art and Design (Dublin) in 1994 with First Class Honours in Fine Art Painting and Art History and received an M.A. in Fine Art Painting at the Chelsea College of Art in London four years later.
He has had solo exhibitions at Museum Haus Lange (Krefeld, Germany), the Castlefield Gallery (Manchester), Stedelijk Museum Aalst (Belgium), Musee de l’Abbaye Sainte-Croix, Les Sables d’Olonne and the Crawford Municipal Gallery of Art (Cork). He has also participated in group shows with the Ikon Gallery (Birmingham), Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin), the Bluecoat Gallery (Liverpool) and many more, and was selected twice for the John Moores exhibitions in the Walker Art Gallery (Liverpool) and in the ‘Utopias’ show at the Douglas Hyde Gallery (Dublin).
Further information : Helga Weckop-Conrads 49.177.3230720
www.galerieconrads.de