In Limerick, Ireland, the Limerick City Gallery of Art is hosting an exhibition of artist Enda O'Donoghue, whose work focuses on "forensic interest in the medium and process of painting and an ongoing dialogue with the mediation of images through digital technology."
One of the works in the show is 'Reno,' above, from 2011. Enda, who I do not know personally, was wandering around the internet and spotted a phonecam snapshot I took of slot machine players in the Reno, NV airport. I'm pretty sure I shot it in 2005, but it may have been earlier. Anyway, he asked if I'd mind if he created a painting from the low-rez jpeg, and I said, sure, go for it. What an amazing thing!
From the show description:
Hovering between the realms of abstraction and representation, between the mathematical encoded and the organic, O'Donoghue's paintings are the result of a process which is highly analytical and methodical and yet inviting of errors, misalignments and glitches. The imagery comes almost exclusively from found photographs sourced from the Internet, where O'Donoghue plays with random throw-away moments of everyday life, merging them together in various interconnected themes. In O'Donoghue's work, the painterliness of his technique works with the disposable nature of his subjects to make the work sometimes poignant and melancholic, or alternatively brittle and harsh. His work is deeply influenced by the digital high speed reality we now live in and he transports these seemingly meaningless sound-bite images from a place of apparent futility to one that questions and searches for meaning through the transformative act of painting.
