Michael Warren
THOSE WHO GO / THOSE WHO STAY
23 January–21 March 2014
Opening: 23 January 2014
Limerick City Gallery of Art
Carnegie Building
Pery Square
Limerick
Ireland
Hours: Monday–Friday 10–5:30pm,
Tuesday 11–5:30pm, Thursday 10–8.30pm,
Saturday 10–5pm, Sunday noon–5pm,
Closed bank holidays. Admission is free.
T +353 (0) 61 310633
helen.carey [at] limerickcity.ie
Limerick City Gallery of Art presents new work by Ireland’s foremost sculptor. With this pivotal exhibition, Michael Warren has created a truly radical and unprecedented body of work; one that is sure to disconcert and raise questions about many long-held concepts in contemporary sculpture.
In the 76-page publication produced to accompany this exhibition, internationally renowned writer Mel Gooding’s essay brilliantly explores the art historical, literary and philosophical influences that inform this outstanding artist’s new work, suggesting:
“These recent sculptures of Warren’s constitute a remarkable creative leap: a shift into new possibilities of sculptural structure, the invention of unprecedented articulations of forms and configurations that borrow with extraordinary insouciance and elegant economy from other arts……
This is a sculpture that reaches back beyond both the informal play and arbitrary ahistorical referencing of the postmodern and the formalist rigours of purist high modernism to forms and presentations of other, older cultures.
It does this with scrupulous intellectual principle, and with a characteristically unorthodox aesthetic economy. Informed by a richly historical imagination, these sculptures of Warren’s enter the ‘highly complex relationships’ of Focillon’s ‘life of forms’; their ‘free and exalted dreaming’ partakes of the never-ending recurrence of artistic imagery and structure that Fritz Saxl called ‘a heritage of images.’”
Warren’s sculpture is informed by a profound love of material side-by-side with a keen comprehension and passion for art history, literature and philosophy. His dedication and achievement have long been recognised in his native Ireland and internationally. He was elected to membership of the Arts Council’s Aosdána in 1981, the Royal Hibernian Academy in 2008 and was awarded Honorary Membership of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland in 2012. There have been similar honours from many of the countries, including Japan (1989), Spain (1991) and Ecuador (1998), where his large-scale public sculpture is sited.
Educated at St Columba’s College, Dublin, Michael Warren attended Bath Academy of Art, England, and Trinity College, Dublin, before completing his studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Milano, Italy, in 1975. Over the past thirty years he has created challenging, outdoor public sculptures in Andorra, Ecuador, England, France, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Morocco, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Taiwan, USA and the French West Indies. Warren’s art has been widely exhibited and is included in important collections worldwide. He lives and works in County Wexford, Ireland, and is represented by Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin.
Limerick City Gallery of Art (LCGA) is one of Ireland’s most significant galleries, with a national and international reputation. LCGA presents exhibitions of contemporary art, as well as exhibitions drawn from its permanent collection of more than 850 works from the 18th century to the present day. Michael Warren will also select works from the LCGA permanent collection for an exhibition taking place at the same time.
For further information on the exhibition, please contact Helen Carey on helen.carey [at] limerickcity.ie or
T +353 (0) 61 310633.
