Graham emerged in the 1980s in a period of uncertainty for the discipline of painting in critical art discourse. He consolidated a position dedicated to a personal quest for existential meaning through aesthetic experience. The electricity and intensity inherent in the work along with the raw emotion evidenced in his gestural marks is derived from his ecstatic responses to history and personal identity. His heroic subjects are imbued with that fundamental human desire to communicate and his compositions present multiple possibilities of interpretation.
In his large paintings, Graham insistently cultivates the relationship between artwork and viewer. His works metaphorise into enthralling spaces and diagrammatic universes teeming with meaning and interpretation. Graham frequently introduces text into his layered compositions, not as citation or illustration, rather as a visible, inseparable action packing a visceral punch through line, colour, and brushstroke.
at Hugh Lane, Dublin
until July 10, 2022