Art Hag

The odd title of Padraig Timoney's current show at Andrew Kreps refers to the artist's choosing to create the works currently on display rather than use that time to rehearse for the role of Lucky in a friend's production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. Instead of Being Lucky features a series of Timoney's paintings, photographs, and sculptures made during a period in which the artist could have prepared for his theatrical close-up. According to the press release, "Rather than being thematically determined by the play, the works in the show are related to it in actual time, the 'subject' being its particular time of production and its own occasion."

Though a multi-media exhibit, the strongest works are Timoney's paintings created using different "'styles' or modes of painting," and "produced by pushing the limits of the medium." In Museum Metropolitan 2, Timoney was inspired by jade and lapis lazuli carvings on display in the Chinese department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He represents the minerals "using pure pigments in a suspension of rabbit skin glue, which are applied to ink-washed raw cotton." For Day by Day (Circe's Palace) and Guts Bog Hermes Star Factor the artist layers images over one another using varying paints (first acrylic, then oil) and adds a final layer of photo developer on top of it all. This final step allows the lower image(s) done in acrylic to become visible because the photo developer dissolves the oil paint and "produc[es] an incomprehensible lattice of color and shape." This process makes the lower layer of Day by Day (Circe's Palace) featuring a checkerboard-like pattern clash with the upper layer of bullseye-like circles, and allows images of a talent show, a slaughterhouse, a bog, and a cathedral to intermingle on the chaotic canvas of Guts Bog Hermes Star Factor.

Born in Northern Ireland in 1968 and studying at Saint Martin's and Goldsmith's before settling in Naples, Italy, Timoney creates clever, complex pieces in multiple mediums. How does he find the time to act?! Viewers are lucky that Timoney chose to work on Instead of Being Lucky over Waiting for Godot. Learn more at Andrewkreps.com. Through June 19th.

Pressed Flowers, left, 2010 and Hatgreen and Redhat, right, 2010