O’Flynn warns of the loss of real creativity
LIKE a Las Vegas neon sign, these attractive paintings draw the eye. The use of a light-box effect and the acrylic on acrylic glass exude a shiny, sharp and finished quality to the works on show.
O’ Flynn’s signature pop-inspired style appears to carry a double-edged meaning: On the one hand, a celebration of the proliferation of the signs and symbols of an ever-expanding global culture and on the other, the mere surface quality or superficiality of a culture that just wants more, that spirals into a mad frenzy of consumerism and an over-emphasis on outside constructions of beauty.
This dichotomy is explored in many ways: The use of religious symbols amid seeming meaningless relics of an over-abundance of the market. The use of comic-like drawing techniques and colouration amid “deeper” overtones, drawn from imagery culled from the canon of Western art history.
In his singular use of line, he can weave a pattern that seems to iterate and expand like the figurations one might find on a computer screen saver that at the same time reveal definite figurative elements. This is well articulated in his freehand drawings applied directly to the gallery walls and floors.
His conceptual schema is clear: The artist seems to invite questions around the digital, the ease, accessibility of knowledge or rather information and the perennial quest for power. In this respect, his figures are like super-heroes – the body distorted to reveal a sort of Barbie doll physique and the colours a brilliant over-emphasis of flatness. In other words, there appears to be a lack of colour merging, each flat area like the postmodern take on a Gauguin sense of the symbolic value of a flat area of colour – only here that tradition is overturned, as the artist dispenses with traditional media and format, and blurs the boundary between popular and fine arts.
In fact, in one piece he has embroidered and there is a sense that the weave is to be further developed, or is it unravelling itself ? This, in effect, questions the state of global culture: Does the rise of mass media and consumerism invite a sense of individuality, personal freedom and power, or does consumer, digitised culture result in the opposite? The selling of personal freedom, of the variety of possible choices, of the eclectic nature of – or overlap of – multiple narratives without a centre to hold it all, may in effect usurp the need for personal space, for defining oneself without the persuasive currents of the times. In turn, one may ask whether fashion fashions us, as if, like a ruthless AI robot, the signs of the times determine the choices we make. What then is freedom?
This almost sinister account of the possible loss of human agency and real creativity is perhaps reflected in O’ Flynn’s figures, who don a sort of bandit mask. His characters are superheroes of sorts but it is not obvious whether they fight for good or not. In fact, in the maelstrom of skulls and tattoos, of religious iconography (he even quotes from the Sistine Chapel) and devious sexual expression, the sheer possibility that the little 0 and 1s can magically spin, means that there is no clear-cut sense of a centre, of a clear direction. All is in flux, mere flickers of light.
Aesthetically, one might note the well-co-ordinated graphic quality and the sexy, hip and youthful zeal of the images. At the same time, this is probably done tongue-incheek and the artist questions the kitschness of popular culture and the very tradition of Fine Art as well. O’ Flynn does so, ironically, via the tradition of painting, but following the experiments already began last century, he inverts that. This does not herald the loss of aesthetic beauty. Rather it points to the all-encompassing throng of aesthetic experience. But is there depth to those neon lights mentioned metaphorically at the outset, those pulsating flashes that urge us to consume? Is art any different from that? (even when there are metaphysical, abstract leanings). At some point the aesthetic – the sign, the form – ought to give way to content, idea, concept. The problem is the complicated history between form and content, and the politics of the aesthetic.