GUGGI

"By salvaging beauty from distress, soulfulness from fragmentation, Guggi creates objects from another world. His battered blueprints of archetypal vessels, spectral beneath a haze of fraying colour, don't sit so much as shudder, as if lit by a source deep inside that confounds their material substance. His are excavations of dissolving shape -- half-remembered and half-erased. Fragile yet enduring, they echo an esoteric tradition of shattered urns, jars, and cups that dates back centuries -- perennial metaphors for the breaking of forms necessary for the release of creativity. At once poignant and philosophical, figurative and abstract, Broken hovers between the physical and the spiritual, like long lost maps of the soul." 

- Kelly Grovier, Art Historian and Poet

In this show, “My Cup Overflows”, Guggi develops on his series “Broken”, first exhibited last year in Chateau La Coste (France). The drawings on distressed brown paper with torn edges and surface creases, show his distinctive motif of bowls disappearing into bold graphite lines that appear to crinkle and contort, sure and unsure, somewhere between figuration and abstraction. Weathered hues of color delineate object and space creating a deceptive simplicity that heightens the work’s stillness and meditative presence. Guggi will also show one sculpture from a series of bronze. The simple, curvilinear form of this bowl-like vessel is a three-dimensional expression to Guggi’s nuanced explorations of form and space.

Bio:  Guggi’s first passion since childhood has been painting. He was a founding member of the cult band Virgin Prunes, notorious for their performative spectaculars on the European underground, where his main contribution was a visual one.  He continued to paint throughout his years in the band, and parted company with them in 1984 to dedicate himself solely to painting, and later sculpture, which he first exhibited in the Shafrazi Gallery in New York in 2001. From the early tentative explorations in the mid 1980’s, Guggi, primarily self-taught, has evolved into one of the most accomplished and recognised Irish painters of his generation.

Guggi has exhibited widely since the 1990’s. Solo exhibitions: Chateau La Coste, Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, Provence (2018); Yoshii Gallery, Paris (2017), New York (2016); Kerlin Gallery, Dublin (2013, 2009, 1993, 1990); Accademia Fine Art, Monaco (2012); BePalermitano, Buenos Aires (2012); Freies Museum, Berlin (2011); John Rocha, London (2010); Yoshii Gallery, New York, (2010); Solomon Gallery, Dublin (2005, 2002, 2000); Osborne Samuel Gallery, London (2004) and Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York (2001), 2000 Solomon Gallery, Dublin (2000), Permanent Installation, Clarence Hotel, Dublin (1996/1997), Kerlin Gallery, Dublin (1993,1990).