Joseph McNamara: REALIZATIONS
March 2 – 31 at Gallery NAGA
Gallery NAGA is pleased to present our first major exhibition of paintings by Joseph McNamara.
Joseph McNamara: REALIZATIONS is on exhibition from March 2 to 31. A reception for the artist and the public will be held at the gallery on Friday, March 2 from 6 to 8 pm.
Joseph McNamara is a New York-based artist whose work has centered on paintings of the industrial landscape and his relationship to it. His paintings are painstakingly detailed and can take months and even years, to complete. Using photographs as aids, they are, however, not “photo-realistic”: each painting strays away from a strict accounting of the subject matter and takes on a life of its own.
McNamara has been based in New York since 1972 when he graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art. Never comfortable with the world of galleries, McNamara has largely flown under the radar and his work is mostly found in private collections.
The NAGA show will include paintings spanning the last 10 years. East Side Access Tunnel depicts the 2nd Avenue tunnel in New York just after it was dug as the framework was being built. The receding tunnel, punctuated by hanging lights, is dark and murky with a glowing green light casting an odd glow to the painting. Every grain of dirt is reproduced in exacting detail. In Gas Separator a massive hunk of steel sits on a platform in the middle of an arid and desolate landscape. Pipes travel in and out of the frame of the composition. We don’t really know where we are in McNamara’s work, but it doesn’t matter. We feel the temperature, air and humidity as if we were in the 2nd Avenue tunnel or in the midst of an oil field–they fully transport us.