Last night we made a double discovery: a very talented young british artist Jill Tegan Doherty and a great exhibition venue: the beautifully renovated showroom of Porcelaingres!
Doherty is a graduate from Chelsea College of Art and Design in London and currently a practicing artist based in Berlin.
Her show presents a collection of paintings and drawings exploring the idea of growth in the psychological sense, referring to the exponential and uncontrollable growth of thoughts and feelings. “I am constantly hindered by my thoughts spiralling out of control. The paintings I produce are, if you like, the device that is put in place to stop that growth. An avenue I take to control, portray, and try to make sense of the way my internal ‘system’ deals and responds to external stimulation”, says Doherty.
By investigating the subconscious and the fleeting imagery that exists at the periphery of human imagination along the line of the the surrealist tradition, Jill Tegan Doherty’s work is not only crossing the boundaries between nature’s creatures within the vegetal, mineral, animal and human realms, but also between the physical, non-physical, conscious and unconscious states of being.
Her paintings and drawings are inhabited by mesmerizing hybrid creatures: metaphorical animal and bird heads morphed with human figures, or disfigured and biomorphic representations of human form, leading way to unusual associations and stream of thoughts.
The artist also mixes her paints from pigments in a traditional fashion and constructs the outer frames and stretchers, conveying a valuable craftsmanship to the work.
Porcelaingres, Mehringdamm 55-57 – Hof 2 / 10961 Berlin
from 10th December 2012 to 8th February 2013, Monday – Thursday from 2pm to 6pm
