20 december 2022, Flor Linckens
Damien Meade's alienating characters
Until 8 January 2023, a solo exhibition by Damien Meade will be on show in the Zuid space of PLUS-ONE Gallery in Antwerp. The practice of the Irish artist moves between sculpture and painting.
Meade's mysterious painted figures do not originate on the canvas. The artist first makes a series of sculptures in clay, which he then photographs, adjusts slightly and photographs again. Sometimes he edits the photos on his computer, after which the photographed imagination forms the basis for the oil painting. The sculpture, which will never see the inside of an oven, is then reformed into material for a new source of inspiration. The resulting painting therefore depicts a sculpture that no longer exists.
The strange characters in Meade's paintings create an eerie and uncanny feeling in the viewer; on the one hand they look lifeless, like a doll or robot, or like a corpse with a blue haze over their eyes. On the other hand, their surrealistic, slightly twisted heads seem ready to start moving at any moment. In some works, part of their heads is enveloped in a pink glow, as if they are slowly coming to life — or life is slowly fading from their faces. Their decapitated faces float against a monochrome background that appears simultaneously flat and infinitely deep. Just like their gaze, which seems to look inwards and to eternity at the same time. As a viewer, you can only guess at the story behind the anonymous and enigmatic figures: the titles of the alienating works offer no additional context, only a serial number.
Meade was born in 1969 in Limerick in Ireland. He completed a bachelor's degree in Fine Art at DIT in Dublin, followed by a master's degree at Chelsea College of Art in London. The artist has won several awards and in 2018, he was invited for The Abbey Fellowship at The British School at Rome, an interdisciplinary research center in the Italian capital. His work was shown in the MONA Museum in Tasmania, among others, and he exhibited his work throughout Europe.
