Hughie O´Donoghue: Last Poems

The Michael Janssen Gallery Berlin is proud to present the first solo exhibition with Hughie O‘Donoghue.

“... Hughie O’Donoghue’s artistic project has been nothing less than the rehabilitation of the human presence in painting. And it is really the presence, rather than the image of the figure per se, that is at stake here. This aim should be considered against the background of the systematic deconstruction of the human subject in a great deal of contem- porary philosophical and cultural theory.

O‘Donoghue‘s concern is ... the retreat from a belief in art’s ability to embody meaning without irony or without the protective insulation of some other distancing device. A great many of O’Donoghue’s works could be construed as attempted answers to the question of wether painting today can encompass human experience, wether it is equal to adressing life in all its absurdity, complexity and tragedy. O’Donoghue’s working method, in repeatedly building up and breaking down a paint surface, so that it is as if an image is, as it were, discovered or unearthed within it, brought to light, migth be compared to a process of digging and probing the land. It is, figuratively speaking, equivalent to a kind of archeological excavation.“

Aidan Dunne

Hughie O’Donoghue (born 1953), who earned a Master’s degree from Goldsmiths College London in 1982, lives and works in London and Ireland. O‘Donoghue has been included in exhibitions at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, the Walker Art Gallery Liverpool and the Berkeley Art Museum. He has also had solo exhibitions in the Haus der Kunst Munich and in the Irish Museum of Modern Art Dublin.

Hughie O´Donoghue
Last Poems