Chelsea, New York: The eighteen new paintings in the Irish-born abstract painter Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh's "Structure" find new force and expression within the high modernist tradition of abstract art. Ní Mhaonaigh's primary aesthetic concern is the organization and ordering of objects in space, and her paintings execute a meta-commentary on the idea of drawing, of built objects, and of dimensionality. The paintings are “about” drawing — their flatness performs the flatness they document in the architectural depiction of a blueprint or plan. Ní Mhaonaigh has spoken of the need to “learn not to interrupt or interfere with the surface of the painting,” and it is this sense of a surface as an almost mystical, self-generating field with its own agency and teleology that gives her paintings their mysterious power.
Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh (b. 1977) graduated with a BA in Fine Art Painting from Dublin Institute of Technology in 2001. In 2010 Ní Mhaonaigh was recipient of the Hennessy Craig Scholarship and was awarded The HOTRON Award 2019 by VISUAL Carlow for outstanding work. She was shortlisted for the Marmite Prize for Painting in 2016, and the John Moores Painting Prize in 2018. Ní Mhaonaigh’s paintings are held in many important public collections, including the Centre Culturel Irlandais (Paris), Ernesto Ventós (Barcelona), Luciano Benetton Collection (Treviso), O’Brien Art Collection (Chicago) and The Arts Council of Ireland (Dublin), as well as private collections in Ireland, across Europe, and in the Unites States.
For further information or to schedule an interview with the artist, please contact 532 Gallery by e-mail at info@532gallery.com
