Kerlin Gallery is delighted to announce the start of the new season with Phillip Allen's first solo in Ireland.

Born in London in 1967 Phillip Allen has, since leaving the Royal College of Art in 1992, gained remarkable international acclaim for his approach to contemporary painting. His work redresses and reinvigorates pictorial conventions, merging the traditions of abstraction and traditional landscape painting, in a highly developed and individual manner.

Allen's paintings depict an imagined space which is always framed at the top and bottom by bands of tactile impasto comprised of luscious rosettes of thick paint that allude to the idea of a paradisiacal garden while simultaneously exploring the sculptural qualities oil paint. From the empty centre of each painting springs a form or pattern or many forms and patterns that play with colour and perspective suggesting a depth of space and a fantastical architecture that is at once intriguing and playful.

Solo shows include Kerlin Gallery 2005, The Approach Gallery, London in 2004 and 2002, PS1 New York 2003 and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels 2003. Group shows include the British Art Show at BALTIC 2005/06, 'Stay Positive' at Marella Arte Contemporanea, Milan, Italy 2004, 'Post Flat - New Art from London', Lock's Gallery, Philadelphia, 2003, 'Another Shitty Day in Paradise', Bart Wells Institute, London, The Royal Academy, London, 2002.