GEMMA TIPTON
John
Cronin, ZXX
8, 2015,
1.2 x 1.8 m, oil on aluminium. Courtesy: the artist and RHA Galleries, Dublin
John Cronin
16
November – 21 December
If Yuri Pattison
looks at how technology both abets and overwhelms, John Cronin draws ideas of
artificial intelligence and augmented reality into his lush abstract oil on
aluminium paintings. Endeavouring to explore, and depict, how evolving technologies
shape and alter perception, the results are a feast. At first, the 14 works
simply shimmer and attract. There are rainbows worth of rich and vibrant
colours and, with the largest pieces more than five metres long, there’s a lot
to grab the attention. Spend time with them, and patterns emerge. The ZXX of the works’ titles (all except for two earlier
pieces Augmented
Reality (2011) and Standard Deviations (2013)) refers to the US Library of
Congress category for books which contain ‘no linguistic content,’ as well as
to a covert typeface, designed by Sang Mun, to avoid optical character
recognition. ZXX
(8) (2015) hints at
patterns or reflections of trees on water, or perhaps recurring lines of
blue-green data, overlaid with bright orange spots – either interference or
perfectly spherical algae. Again, in ZXX (15) (2016) the forms are either teeming amoeba or patterns of code.
Cumulatively, Cronin has created his own abstract language that visualises the
usually unseen deep data that structures our lives.
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| John Cronin, ZXX 8, 2016, 1.8 x 3.6m, oil on aluminium. Courtesy: the artist and RHA Galleries, Dublin |
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