Jack McConville ‘Jack McConville’

In this new body of work on show at The Modern Institute’s Airds Lane space, Jack McConville experiments with a gradient of interchanging images of figures both isolated and in groups – seemingly conjoined in action.

Constructed through McConville’s deep engagement with art-historical subject and form, his paintings allude to genres, eras and cultural phenomena. From the sensuality of Flaubert’s literary portraits, to Chinese calligraphy his practice remains resistant to categorisation.

McConville’s representation of the figure though referential to the painterly traditions of antiquity, resists any hierarchy of influence or fixed reading as mono-cultural beings. Here we see McConville experiment with the installation of his work whilst largely remaining consistent to the proportions of a square – a set parameter from which he explores the potential of his dynamic, unified images. His deft handling of paint and rigorous examination of subject matter enables McConville to build a visual language that samples and remixes at will, offering moments of recognition in a heady feed of vibrant, energised production.

Kaleidoscopic in their use of colour, the vigour of McConville’s layered surfaces maintain the immediacy of his mark making and an awareness of the passage of time, thus – the potential for him to transition through subject matter and form. Throughout swipes, dashes, flicks and double taps enrich the painted surfaces, constructions whose meanings often remain obscured — as if caught in the hyperflux cascade of the digital image-scape.

Jack McConville (b. 1984, Edinburgh, UK) lives and works in Glasgow. He studied at the Academy of Fine Art, Vienna and the Glasgow School of Art, graduating in 2008.

McConville’s solo exhibitions include: Ibid Gallery, London (2016); The Modern Institute, Osborne Street, Glasgow (2016); ‘Authentic Spiritual Spray’, Ibid Gallery, Los Angeles (2014); ‘The Effects of Sugar’, The Still House Group, New York (2014); ‘Tutti Fertitti’, Tramway, Glasgow (2013); ‘We Have No Bananas’, Intermedia Gallery, CCA Glasgow (2012); New Work Scotland, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh (2012).

Selected group exhibitions include: ‘honey;love;phermones’, Dio Horia, Mykonos (2016); ‘Full of Peril and Weirdness’; Painting as a Universalism, M WOODS, Beijing (2015/16); ‘24/7’, MONTE CARLO, 6551 Collins Avenue, APARTMENTS #1206 & #606, Miami (2015); ‘Service Entrance’, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium (2014); ‘All Masters at the Swing Door’, ReMap4, Athens (2013); and ‘Public Displays of Affection’, Glasgow (part of Glasgow International 2012).