Painter John Cronin presents a series of abstract works that are intense, chaotic and claustrophobic, finds Róisín Kennedy
Artist John Cronin describes his recent paintings as ‘my Alt Genre Paintings, mechanical, gestural and organic celebrations and abuses of paint’. Unlike the expansive compositions in his last exhibition, ‘Artificial Bee Colony’, in 2024, the overall mood of the intense abstract works in this show is more chaotic and claustrophobic. While Cronin continues many of the themes and tropes of his earlier oeuvre, their smaller scale and more concentrated surfaces appear less optimistic than the large-scale elements of past paintings.
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