Winns Gallery is delighted to announce Material – Art, an exhibition of 10 new abstract sculptures by Irish artist, Jonathan O’Dea MRSS, FRSA, exploring the metaphysics and physical science of making art.
The work for this exhibition started from the discovery by O’Dea of burnt and discarded materials in a local building destroyed by fire, augmented by other found, household and building waste materials, including discarded plastic CD covers, building aggregate and castoff metal from construction sites.
O’Dea’s use of these contrasting found, and repurposed materials is used to explore ideas of cohesion - from the physical to the metaphysical - as well as discovering how the chemical composition of different materials can determine the outcome of an individual work. Even under intense heat and pressure the materials will not create a uniformed bond, as one heats up the other burns, or cracks. They may stick together but never become a resolved or solid mass.
For O’Dea, the juxtaposition of these materials also stands as a metaphor for the human condition. He says, “Through these sculptures I am exploring the relationship between abstract art and science and how humans try to create order from ‘chaos’ to make sense of the world around us. This might involve stretching the cognitive processes to think outside the box to find answers – but also accepting that truth and reality cannot always be easily understood.”
The four vertical, totemic works, standing at just over human height, create a curious tension in the viewer, calling to mind both the destruction inherent in their making and the history and present circumstance of human conflict around the world.
Dr Julian Freeman, Art Historian at the Courtauld Gallery, observes. “The combination of fierce heat and natural and man-made materials, sourced from unknown locations, can make these works disturbing, and in their pillar-like presences they can easily resonate with eras, or to epochs that are more in keeping with the classical world than with the twenty-first century”.
These sculptures also stand as a commentary on our wasteful society, repurposing discarded ‘trash’ into sculptures which are dynamic and imbued with a, urban aesthetic which is both beautiful and thought provoking in its rawness.
