Genieve Figgis: What we do in the shadows
June 3 — July 29, 2017 • Brussels
Opening on Saturday, June 3rd, 2017 / 5 - 8 pm
Almine Rech Gallery Brussels is pleased to present the second solo exhibition of Genieve Figgis with the gallery.
Genieve Figgis is a consummate storyteller. Using paint rather than words, her deeply narrative works—often conjuring characters and settings out of the Edwardian age of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy—fit snugly within this long tradition of Irish cultural production. While it may seem essentialist, if not a political minefield, to overemphasize national identity in critical discussions of Figgis’ work, it could be argued that what distinguishes her use of figuration from the slew of contemporary painters is a distinctive translation of the Irish “blarney” into a pictorial form. What theorists such as Eagleton wrote of nineteenth century Irish writers such as Oscar Wilde’s ambivalent relationship to Britannia could easily applied to Figgis’ own work: both conjure Anglo-Irish society at the cusp of Irish independence. A world that is infused with qualities of “violence, travesty, affection, complicity, mimicry, subversion, mutual mystification.”
- Excerpt from Alison M. Gingeras, « Picturing Blarney – Notes on the Irishness of Narrative in the work of Genieve Figgis » (2017) to be published in the upcoming monograph of Genieve Figgis by Rizzoli in October 2017.
The opening will take place tomorrow from 5 to 8 pm - Rue de l'Abbaye 20 Abdijstraat, 1050 Brussels
