Dougal McKenzie
Dunkelbunt
February 20th – March 6th 2009
Private View: Thursday 19th February 6-8pm
the third space is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Dougal McKenzie. Most painters are probably struck by the fact that within a world of proliferating imagery, painting has to stand in a pretty long queue behind other forms of image production, before it reaches any audience. This is a good position to be in as a painter, living as we do in a hugely image-saturated society. There is a wider audience with a higher level of image/ media literacy than ever before. The fact that most of this has come to us through the screen, be it YouTube, Google Image, FaceBook, BBC iPlayer or a visit to Contemporary Fine Art Berlin on-line, is of great interest to me as a painter. I cannot conceive of making paintings that do not in some way connect to new media. Nearly all of the work in this exhibition derives from some level of Googling and PhotoShopping, tied-in with historical moments that I do some reading around. I have recently been reading about the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, but my process extends out to any other reference that may provide me with the right sort of image. It can be quite an indiscriminate process, and it’s fine I think to have some joggers from the Boston Marathon in 1986 running past the old ‘Bellevue’ entrance to Belfast Zoo, or some characters from a Woody Allen film turning up at Edouard Manet’s apartment. This layering of different histories opens-up the process of viewing and interpreting a picture. For me, making and looking at paintings can be like ‘historiography’- the study of how history is related and narrated.
Dougal McKenzie, February 2009.
For information and additional images please contact; Hugh Mulholland on 0044 (0) 2890 237757 or hugh@thethirdspacegallery.com
the third space, suite 11&12, Scottish Mutual Building,16 Donegall Square South, Belfast BT1 5JA
Gallery Opening Hours – Monday – Friday 11am – 5pm, Closed 1pm – 2pm, Saturday by Appointment
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