VISUAL ARTS:French by birth, Nathalie du Pasquier has been based in Italy, in the city of Milan, for many years, and she is known for her still-life paintings - works recognisably related to the "metaphysical" school of Italian painting, writes Aidan Dunne
The term metaphysical painting was coined by Carlo Carrà in a book he published in 1918, though it never amounted to a coherent programme. In a sense, his argument was that classical representational technique was still relevant to contemporary life, that modernity did not necessitate abstraction in art, something that still holds true. The finest metaphysical painters, Giorgio Morandi and Giorgio de Chirico, do attain something like metaphysical profundity in their work.
De Chirico's architectural spaces and Morandi's still-lifes are charged with a sense of mystery and strangeness. Although they are quite different in character, there is an intriguing equivalence between certain aspects of their painting: there is an architectural quality to Morandi's still-lifes and de Chirico's architectonic spaces are like still-lifes. This holds true of du Pasquier's work as well.
Her still-life arrangements are usually depicted close-up, on a larger-than-life scale, simplified in terms of form, colour and texture. To say they are simplified doesn't mean they are superficial: rather each object is rendered in a way that derives from sustained, patient observation, whereby complicated optical phenomena are distilled down to their essential components.
The effect is a kind of slowed-down looking, as with the metaphysical painters, so that each thing, and indeed the spaces between, has an enhanced presence and clarity. Du Pasquier likes to introduce slightly perplexing elements that can bring her work some way towards abstraction. And her current show RUSSIA,at the Rubicon Gallery, is something of a departure in being her most sculptural by far to date.
In fact its centrepiece is a constructed, painted wood cabin, incorporating several paintings inside and out as well as elements of relief sculpture. In a way, this is a logical extension of what she does in her paintings and her smaller constructions, which is in each case to create an integral space of indeterminate scale, a world of its own.
The painted constructions feel right because they have this air of being self-contained and complete, as though they are scale models of interiors or theatrical sets. There is something else as well, though.
Du Pasquier is quoted as saying that she called her show RUSSIAbecause she liked the sound of the word. But there is an empathy between her use of hard-edge geometric forms, together with certain colours, including red and black, and Russian abstraction, though perhaps a greater affinity is with a more mainstream European abstraction represented by De Stijl and the Bauhaus.
While du Pasquier evokes these great modernist movements, and while there is a utopian impulse evident in her work, it surely relates to a distinctly modest utopia: the organisation of a space, the arrangement of a few items that make up a complex and chaotic world so that they combine to produce a harmonious whole.
Part of the appeal of her paintings, drawings and constructions is her evident relish of the things she depicts, the pleasure she derives from the play of light on solid form, and her ability to convey the magic attendant on even the most familiar, utilitarian objects when we look at them anew.
DEFINING SPACE,at the Original Print Gallery, arose from a conference investigating "the meaning and role of space in contemporary theory and practice". It was curated by Dr Hugh Campbell of the UCD School of Architecture and it includes work by members of the Black Church Print Studio and others. Much of the work included takes a relatively straightforward approach in that it depicts spaces of various kinds: Stephen Vaughan's forest glade framed by deep black walls, Lynda Devenney's photographic study of an unoccupied public waiting area, Colin Martin's beautifully made prints of housing.
Vincent Sheridan takes another tack with video footage of a massed flock of birds - starlings? John Graham uses polystyrene packaging to stand in for the urban fabric being made, destroyed and remade. Cora Cummins and Liam Sharkey show paired, moody video imagery of working factories (with a soundtrack by Jason Oakley), which is fascinating not least because it seems relatively unusual to find a factory producing anything these days.
Fiona McDonald's sculptures, which involve growing crystals by means of an electrochemical process, are remarkable - she shows a striking example here, together with related images. Perhaps the most extraordinary piece, though, is by Margaret O'Brien. I live in the cracks in the wallis based on a piece of embossed, floral-patterned wallpaper. It becomes a beautiful sculptural work by virtue of the application of myriad pins, exploring O'Brien's habitual themes of domesticity, craftwork, obsessiveness and the line between inner and outer worlds.
NIAMH O'MALLEY'S A situation, a situation, and a story, at Temple Bar Gallery, is a bit disappointing. O'Malley has devised a way of working that combines painted or other prepared elements with projected light of video footage. She leaves us suspended in a recurring present, unsure which aspects of what we are looking at are fixed and which variable. The three pieces in her current show continue her exploration of these concerns.
One, Scotoma, which refers to a blind-spot, enacts just that, offering us the extremely unpleasant experience of looking at a succession of imagery with a huge, black blind-spot obscuring nearly everything of relevance. The visually engaging Butterflyrecalls Alexander Pope's celebrated quote: "Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?" The wheel in this case being time. The third piece was, alas, virtually impossible to see as it was flooded with light from the window at the front of the gallery.
• RUSSIA:New Work by Nathalie du Pasquier, Rubicon Gallery, St Stephen's Green, Dublin, until Mar 28; Defining Space, Original Print Gallery, Temple Bar, Dublin, until Mar 9; A situation, a situation, and a story, Niamh O'Malley. Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, until Apr 4
