Autoparent

Lismore Castle Arts presents a new exhibition by Enrico David. For this exhibition, the artist has created a site specific work. Cast in fibreglass and jesmonite, this work will utilise the architecture of the historic St Carthage Hall to disrupt the visitor experience.

David’s work encompasses painting, sculpture, textiles and installation with the act of drawing being key to his exploration of form. Mining a space between figuration and abstraction, the artist consistently returns to the body as a point of departure, exploring the human figure as a metaphor for transformation.

Enrico David’s contemporary surrealism challenges our reliance on language and its attendant need for reasoned apprehension. David’s practice deftly employs a range of materials and techniques - painting, sculpture and various other traditions of handicraft, always rooted in drawing - to make tangible a body in perpetual metamorphosis. The disembodied personae populating the artist’s oeuvre exist in an unsettling state of liminality, emerging with reluctance and uncertainty: heads protrude inappropriately from constructions resembling furniture, limbs extend into ornamentation, bodies dissolve into abstraction. Anthropomorphism is the leitmotif of David’s work. His incongruous imagery evokes Surrealism’s bizarre narratives while subtly questioning modernism’s tendency toward abstraction.

This will be David’s only major solo exhibition of 2016 and is kindly supported by Michael Werner Gallery, London and New York.