The Kerlin Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Stephen McKenna, from February 18 until March 20, 2000.

While Stephen McKenna's painting has always been rooted in classical realism, for him classicism has been more a question of attitude than subject matter. More often than not he uses the formal elements of shape, structure and light to draw the viewer's attention to the abstract and indeterminate within the physical world.

"IL During the 1990s overt pictorial references to antiquity have given way to a sophisticated . of the enduring value of the time-honoured genres of the still life, the interior, the landscape and the seascape. It is specifically the Irish landscape and seascape that McKenna addresses in his new body of work at the Kerlin Gallery. In her catalogue essay that accompanies these new paintings, Hilary Pyle has written: 'Allied with the prevailing idiosyncratic formality and the physical sensuality is a spiritual intensity, which points to something intangible beneath the slightly troubled exterior.' 

Stephen McKenna has had major solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford in 1983, Stadtische Kunsthalle, Duesseldorf in 1986 and the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 1993. He participated in Documenta 7 in 1982, Classical Spirit at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and `Falls the Shadow' at the Hayward Gallery, London, in 1986 and Avant Garde of the 80's, Los Angeles County Museum of Modern Art in 1987. His work is represented in such collections as the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Tate Gallery, London. A major exhibition of his work will take place at the Hans and Sophie Teuber-Arp Foundation, Bonn in March 2000, 

A catalogue with a text by Dr. Hilary Pyle will accompany the exhibition. 

For further information or visual material, please contact Kirsten Dunne.