event details posted by: begins: Jun 4, 6:00 pm ends: Jun 4, 9:30 pm location: Knapp Gallery, 162 N 3rd St, Philadelphia, PA 19106

For Immediate Release
Contact: Karl Slocum
609-402-5917
karl@knappgallery.com
 
The Knapp Gallery Presents
Liam Dean
In
“Alchemy 101”
 
Exhibition: June 3rd – June 26th, 2011
 First Friday Opening: June 3rd, 2011
Artist Reception: Sat. June 4th (1pm – 4pm)
 
(Philadelphia) – The Knapp Gallery continues its tradition of First Friday openings and welcomes Liam Dean in his first solo exhibition here at Knapp. A self taught artist, Liam is aggressive in his never ending search for new processes and product. An abstractionist by virtue of his processes, Liam’s imagery challenges the Periodic table as we know it.  
 
Always with a contemplative visual offering, Liam’s imagery, composition, his paint and perspective constantly challenge our rational sensibilities. With an excited and frenetic palette, unidentifiable yet elements of familiarity conjure up unique and identifiable qualities of his venturesome craftsmanship. With an innate command of light, Liam adds sense to the seemingly non comprehensible yet ever-present microcosmic world about us. As if living organisms, the content of Liam’s paintings assimilate photographs taken at the microscopic level; one senses life in Liam’s paintings.
 
Though abstractions in the purest sense, Liam’s renderings having both macro and micro elements that invoke senses of and existence of form. Always with odd off-kilter perspective, Liam’s imagery, fundamentally gestalt, posits new genre; elementalism. His current exhibition Alchemy 101 explores notions of controlled substances in otherwise states of chaos. Seemingly studies in catalyst vs. resist, resulting textures are reactions between opposing elements. Cracked with resinous spider veins of under-painting, Liam’s patina is aggressive. 
 
His images suggest liquidity of process. In their molten states we are given over emotionally to the permanence of their hardness and finality; there exists a revealed relationship between infancy and maturity.    Explosive in their dynamic, the paintings are solutions triumphing over chaos. Ultimately, each painting is a birthing. Understanding the intricacies of his mechanics and elements, Liam leverages keen dynamics, eruptions even, which yield exciting  paint applications.