Between Leaving and a Possible Return
NEIL CARROLL
May 18 - July 28 2012
Among this mass we clambered, while all about us the fracturing blocks dragged us with their yawning gravitation. Poised, just waiting to be nudged into action. The pitch of dark-lined cracks, riotous in direction, so that stability is conjectured upon.
Neil Carroll’s work spans three essentially different media; Painting, sculpture and Installation.
Centred around a painting process, sculpture and installation are incorporated and amalgamated so that painting can become expansive and very often site-specific. The manifestations of these media has ranged from the brutish: squat and broad (made from wood and plaster and house-paint) to the ephemeral and temporal: a painted room that was erased from existence almost as soon as it arrived.
This 'painting' process begins from a non-specific point. A mark becomes the intersection of many points which unfolds to produce a visual encounter. The process deals with the elements of painting such as frame, perspective or space, but teases them apart and chases them through their various physical manifestations.
Predominantly using a structural core of architectural forms and using materials more commonly found in construction such as wood, plaster and house-paint, Carroll continually dismantles, reassembles, deconstructs and constructs his pieces until they reach a state that is contradictorily both static and in flux.
His work searches for schematics, posing the logical conjecture that of if conceptually, architectural boundaries are representative of human potential and limitations and based on pre-defined and systematic solutions to existing problems, then, by stripping back and pulling apart, a framework or diagram can be exposed.
At this conjuncture, by interjecting and re-building with a more visceral, re-active and dynamic approach, varying configurations and multiple solutions are made apparent.
Biography
Neil Carroll is an emerging Visual Artist living and working in Dublin. Since completing his Degree in 2010, achieving First Class Honours, he has been continuously exhibiting. Solo shows include 'Working Backwards' (2011) at The Joinery, Arbour Hill, Dublin and 'Changeable Limits' (2011) at Ormonde Studios, Ormonde Quay, Dublin, both being awarded exhibitions. He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions in Marseilles, Limerick, Sligo, and Dublin and was short-listed for the Red Stables Residential Studio Award, Dublin and the Royal Academy Schools Award, London.