Ian McKeever

The Alan Cristea Gallery is holding an exhibition of new work by Ian McKeever, which will consist of interrelated drawings, monotypes, paintings and prints. The different media are employed to the same end as McKeever pursues his very personal vision of man's relationship to nature.

The focal and starting point of the exhibition is a series of prints entitled Colour Etching, a title which derives from Ludwig Wittgenstein's notes on the nature of colour and our perceptions of it. The works in the exhibition display no obvious colour, but within the endless nuances of black, white and the potential for light, darkness, and luminosity that their presence may emanate.

This sense of arriving at a form, of its potential severity and roughness, or brittleness and incertitude, is further reflected in McKeever's work processes. Forms are deeply bitten out of the etching plate or gauged into being by a nervous drypoint line. Equally, in the monoprints and drawings, delicate biro lines may veil emerging profiles. Strength and fragility coexist in their execution, but the images convey an enduring authority and timelessness.

In all previous exhibitions of McKeever's work, he has concentrated on one specific medium. In this forthcoming exhibition, all media at the artists' disposal are shown together for the first time.