ROSC 84
THE UNDISPUTED STAR OF Rose '84 is its venue, the Guinness Hop Store in Rainsford Street. It is quite simply the best venue that Rose has ever had, and the first firm indication that the exhibition might have found a permanent home. It provides a setting of breathtaking drama for the art work, and turns the show into a remarkable and indispensible event, something it really hasn't been since the original Rose in the RDS back in 1967. In as much as it marks the arrival of a welcome new gallery space, the promising inauguration of a facility of national significance, Rose '84 should be seen by everyone who can possibly get to it.
The conversion work on the handsome four-storey building has successsfully emphasised the basic nature of its structure: stone dressed brick with wooden, cast iron and steel pillars and beams, and beautiful bare pine floors. The fabric of the place is so handsome and so dramatic that siting an exhibiition in it at all was something of a gamble. It is a gamble that has paid off handsomely. Paintings and sculptures sit happily against tough, robust backkgrounds: pressure washed pine and rich earthen pink brickwork. Any innate drama in the work is enhanced rather than drowned. In the new painting, of course, there is drama aplenty. Rosc '84 represents the first opportunity Ireland has had to see at first hand exemplars of the movement that has for several years now domiinated the international art circuit. Rose, though at first glance it may appear almost frighteningly diverse, basically consists of a combination of the minimalism that dominated in the seventies and the new painting that has tended to supersede, though not devalue it. Any such description is of course an oversimplification. There are, thankfully, artists who will always defy any attempt at rigid categoriisation. And more than likely they will be the best ones.
The new painting is present in the guise of many of its prime exponents.
There is Julian Schnabel from America. The variable standard of his work is startling and symptomatic of many of the other artists. His loose, unnstructured style celebrates casualness, chance. His compatriot David Salle pursues a similarly arbitary course, juxtaposing highly coloured, random compositions with photographically derived, monochromatic fragments.
The European painters are also there in force: Baselitz, the German who is notorious for painting everyything upside down, as a way of seeing things anew and dismissing the tradiitional idea of content; Anselm Kiefer, whose scorched earth landscapes and monumental architecture play ambiivalently with Naziism; Sigmar Polke, another champion of chance, conncerned with the indiscriminate mass of imagery that we are nowadays subjected to. The less categorical but expressive and painterly Martin Disler comes out particularly strongly, perrhaps because so many of these artists seem to be hung up on mannerist peculiarities of style. The Italians are notably more soft-centred in their approach. The three Cs - Chia, Clemente and Cucchi - are all reppresented. Chia's lush brand of figuraation and striking imagery make him immediately entertaining and accesssible. The French are disappointing, Garouste's redundant, derivative mannnerism and Cane's repetitious elaboraations on one facet of de Kooning's work.
Of the minimalists, the spare simmplicity of Ellsworth Kelly's off-centre shapes look particularly well in the context of the Hop Store. Carl Andre also has a fine piece in "Intersects New York", a simple six timber slab construction, but we could really do without his affectation of local idiom, his arrangem ent of turf pieces (com e on, Carl . . .). Robert Morris and Donald Judd don't present us with any surprises, but there is a confident solidity to their role as mainstream minimalists, and they don't disappoint, as Lawrence Weiner's stencilled messsages, alas, certainly do. Joel Schapiro's metal and wood sculptures (post-minimalist) have great elegance and finish, and suggest strong associations with the achievement of David Smith.
And the individualists? Marvellous to encounter the lush painterliness of Albert Irvin, whose romantic abstracctions pulse with warm colour. The visionary Frans Widerberg has a guileeless directness that is extremely perrsuasive. Richard Long, and David Nash, not perhaps directly comparable, have in common an affinity with the British landscape tradition, however unexpected the forms their work has chosen to adopt. A.R. Penck's spikey calligraphic style is aggressively disstinctive. It is worth noting that the Irish work, by and large, stands up very well in this international commpany.
There is, as well, a certain amount of work in the show that I for one, could certainly do without. But, taken overall, Rose '84 is an extremely stimulating and entertaining exhibition. Approach it with an open mind, be prepared to use the excellent cataalogue and form your own judgements, and you will come out of it a great deal the wiser about the state - good or bad - of modern art.
The Guinness Hop Store can be reached by turning left at St Catherine s Church in Thomas Street and then taking the first right into Rainsford Street. The exhibition will be open until November 17. Opening times are: Monday-Friday: 10-6; Thursday: late opening until 9; Saturday: 10-5; Sunday: 2-6. Adults £2, children, old-age pensioners and unwaged 50p.