Michael Coleman's paintings, at the Green on Red Gallery, are as much unpainted as painted. In the images that we see in the main gallery space, accumulated layers of pigment, culminating in a thick coat of black, have been attacked and partially removed. We are left with residual areas of black and underlying colour - sometimes going right back to the white ground.
It is stylistically typical of Coleman that one colour dominates each work. Hence we have Black Green, or Black Red and so on. At first glance the complex surfaces engendered suggest possible associations, with landscape for example.
But it quickly becomes apparent that this is not the case. Every mark is functional and refers to nothing beyond itself. The swathes of the scraper that gouge out trails of pigment are clearly visible. That is to say, the pictures do not disguise the processes of their making, from the excavated strata of colour, to the emergent cruciform of the stretchers that is visible because the canvas is repeatedly forced back against it by the impact of the scraper. Each large painting is made and unmade, but never completely one or the other. It negotiates a space for itself in the no man's land between. Coleman leaves things open.
The first exhibits you encounter are a set of smaller panels, each dominated by one, vibrant colour. They could be the starting point for the larger works. There is another fine group of small pieces, this time multi-coloured, that also inform the large works. These latter recall Gerhard Richter, not primarily because of the way they look, more for the way Coleman always tries to get back to essentials, to question the very basis of what he's doing. What we see emerges from a sustained interrogation of the process. It's a high-risk strategy, like constantly calling the painting's bluff. But it pays off handsomely in an extremely good show that allows us to take nothing for granted.
Nowadays, carving and modelling, which not that long ago formed the basis of sculptural practice, have been largely superseded by other media. It's inevitable that this should be so, but it would be a shame if these areas of sculptural language withered through neglect. Against this background, Cork sculptor Michael Quane, exhibiting at Temple Bar Gallery, is something of a phenomenon. Not only is he a natural stone carver, completely at home with the method and the material, he also has a personal, distinctive vision that is intimately tied to the means of its expression. All of his work is the product of a very particular sensibility, and it is hard to think of it taking any form other than carved stone. It seems slightly anachronistic not so much because it is carved in stone but because it is figurative in a highly mannerised way to boot. There's a distinctly Gothic touch to his images of horses, bulls and men. They make up a concentrated, masculine world of mass and muscle, of brute physical effort. Many of the nude male figures are middle-aged and heavy-set. Though they are still strong, the flesh is already sagging on their frames.
The animals come across not as mythical archetypes but as sturdy workers. Both men and animals fight desperately against time and gravity, but they know the battle is already lost. Quane carves with the easy fluency of someone making a sketch, releasing complex forms from the block with an uncanny precision. He is willing to push his imagery towards the grotesque without trivialising it or playing it for laughs, and the result is something exceptional, well worth seeing.
The Paul Kane Gallery occupies two nice, spacious rooms on the first floor of 53 South William Street. At the moment it is occupied by Near and Far, a two-person show featuring the work of Angela Hackett and Megan Eustace. The former makes close, intimately observed studies of landscape that aim for a kind of meditative intensity, different in appearance but comparable in effect to the work of Veronica Bolay. Hackett is intermittently successful. Fading Light is a very good watercolour, and Mountain Stream a beautiful drawing which finds a graphic descriptive language without being strictly representational. When things don't quite work out so well, as with Tree, it is perhaps because the image is just too casually delivered.
Eustace's art is one of fragments, seemingly insignificant details and oblique references. She draws with a nervous, spidery line, inscribing ghostly, partial views of figures and incorporating cryptic asides. The upshot is that a specific, personal narrative is implied but we are never quite granted access to it. But it will be interesting to see how the work develops.
Michael Coleman, paintings can be seen at the Green on Red Gallery until September 26th. Michael Quane, new works can be seen at Temple Bar Gallery until September 30th. Near and Far can be seen at the Paul Kane Gallery until Saturday
