Untitled (PDREF121) (2009)
Oil on Linen over mdf panel,
14 x 16 inches

The Green On Red Gallery is delighted to announce the much-anticipated exhibition of new paintings by Paul Doran. The exhibition will consist of a significant body of new paintings, mostly small in size, painted on linen on board. The exhibition will run from September 3 to October 3, 2009.

This will be the artist’s first exhibition in the gallery in almost 3 years and will mark a significant stage in the development of his practice as one of the most engaging artists of his generation. His approach to painting has been an intensive enquiry and examination of the role and relevance of image-making today. His work is deeply analytical rather than about positing solutions. Doran makes paintings that are as conceptually rich and awkward as they are physically and visually remarkable. His starting point is the history of painting and its legacy, today, as an artform in many ways at odds with the age of digital media, an age of sound-bites, slick effects and quick fixes. Doran’s painting has a moral charge and urgency that is rare in today’s world but never so necessary.

The probing and questioning in Paul’s work is evident in the visual puzzles and conundrums that we find in paintings like Untitled (PD Ref 124) or Untitled (PD Ref 136). Vaguely mathematical figures take shape but are immediately challenged by neighbouring marks and inchoate spaces which appear much more instinctual and raw. Systems are fractured, discontinuous even obscured. Lines actively draw the eye in a variety of routes around and within the painted perimeter, never allowing easy pause and more than likely to be inconclusive. Echoes of the analytical work of Paul Cezanne and the early Cubists sound in these demanding paintings that create another dimension, a different sense of time where there is a rewarding sense of looking and receiving, simultaneously. No one puts it more eloquently than the artist himself when describing some of the tension and energy in this work:

The new paintings suggest figurative elements, without revealing specific details. Stripes, blobs, smears, scratches and triangles all gather in cluttered landscapes or polychromatic fields. Dark triangles are hidden behind a muddy veil. Slab-like forms are mashed together or caught in a moment of transition from figurative to abstract. Black dots dominate an out of focus painterly background creating a sense of anxiety or disorientation. Other paintings suggest a simplicity that is both surprising and overwhelming.

Since the artist’s last exhibition in the gallery he has exhibited in The Butler Gallery, Kilkenny (solo), Sunday L. E. S., New York (solo), Western Exhibitions, Chicago and the Jerwood Contemporary Painting Show, London, Cheltenham, Norwich and Leeds.