Killeen @ Mcleavey

On Saturday I caught Richard Killeen's show at the Peter Mcleavey Gallery. I'm not sure what to make of it. I was impressed with the technical perfection of the works - computer generated heavily textured scenes - whose black lined edges trace a heritage to Killeens more recognised aluminium cutouts. I liked the links to Cezanne, again through the black lines hinting at Cezanne's (then) revolutionary bold outlines and shadows a century ago, and the modern take on the formally staged and richly coloured diorama of the Dutch masters. I was drawn into the stories the works were telling, trying to figure out the relationships between the various figurative objects in the works and the what the artist was saying by his choice of texture and shape.

The show also reminded me of a time when I loaded Microsoft Publisher on 30 computers, and then spent a year retraining 30 staff that just because they had access to 120 different fonts, they didn't need to use half of them on a single A4 page. Kileen's work unquestionably shows a mastery of some sophisticated 3d modelling software that has been building over his work of recent years, but I was repelled by the overly intricate textures employed (to be fair both stock and custom). The result was like chocolate sauce on chocolate pudding. The forms in the works are rich and sweet, but so is the texture. Together they're almost too much.

Richard Killeen's website
Andrew McLeod's website (compare and contrast)