Austin McQuinn : The Force of Destiny

November 15 th – December 22 nd 2007

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DCP Project Space, 1928 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

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David Cunningham Projects presented ‘The Force of Destiny’ a solo show of new and selected work by

Austin McQuinn on view from November 15th thru December 22nd, 2007.

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‘The Force of Destiny’ featured a new installation specially conceived for the DCP project space and presented in

conjunction with a selection of recent related work, including a video piece originally commissioned as part of a

large-scale installation for Cork 2005, European Capital of Culture.

Assuming the guise of a patho/comic-monkey/maker McQuinn’s performance/installation promises to be the result of a live, real-time exploration of the themes at the core of Verdi’s Opera of the same name. The spectacle of this Simian Shaman trying desperately to complete the mammoth task of reproducing and re-enacting an entire Opera in plaster and thrift store detritus in front of a live audience ultimately creates another drama that in turn mimics the operatic. Though the task is surely doomed the viewer becomes entangled and implicated in the complexities of this personal drama.

Expanding on the ideas explored in his 2005 installation ‘Ape Opera House’, McQuinn takes on the central questions posed in Verdi’s opera ‘La Forza Del Destino’ asking - what is the force that drives our lives? Is it ourselves? Or is destiny an abstract power that pushes all before it and is there anything the individual can do about it?

 

Verdi revised, re-worked and re-released the Opera several times during his lifetime. Commenting on his creative

process he wrote “If I write something that breaks the rules, I do so because in that case I can’t get what I want from

the rules, and because I don’t really believe that all the rules are perfect”. McQuinn himself has said that “Art is about manifesting ideas, and exhibitions should be about the releasing of ideas, not the conclusion of thought.”

With their humble origins in discarded packaging, cheap figurines and household flotsom McQuinn’s installations

challenge the current fascination with escalating production values and high-end commodity fabrication in art. In a

time when Art production has been industrialized it can often seem that a work’s content has been overwhelmed by

it’s method of fabrication and that the means have displaced the ends. Rejecting consumption in favor of ‘re-

creation’ McQuinn deploys the alchemical strategy of transmutation. In his “apeing” of Verdi’s opera (another

‘found object’) the artist wills his Simian alter-ego to forge glitter from dross in an attempt to make ‘Opera’ from the quotidian, breaking the rules and in the process re-working ‘The Force of Destiny’ to release it’s ideas afresh.

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David Cunningham 2007

 

 

Austin McQuinn lives and works in Ireland. His first

exhibition in the United States was with DCP in April 2007.

© AUSTIN McQUINN – (Untitled Video Still)Credits

 

Austin McQuinn wishes to especially thank artist, Eva Bovenzi for her invaluable and integral contribution to the work in this exhibition.

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David Cunningham and the artist are very grateful to Richard T. Walker and Eoin McQuinn for their time and

assistance in the installation of this show.

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For more information about these artists and contributors please visit:-

Evabovenzi.com

Richardtwalker.net

Eoinmcquinn.com

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About David Cunningham Projects

Based in San Francisco and established in 2007 David Cunningham Projects aimed to provide a new forum for the

promotion and exhibition of contemporary work by emerging, established and under-recognized artists with a

special focus on new work being produced in Ireland. DCP’s primary mission was to exhibit work of quality that is not being shown or is under-represented in the Bay Area. DCP functioned as a project space showcasing the work of emerging artists and as a space where more established artists were encouraged to experiment outside the

parameters of their ‘normal’ practice, giving them an opportunity to show unfamiliar or ‘difficult’ work or to exhibit

their work in contexts in which it might otherwise never be seen.

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DCP’s focus was not media specific and exhibited work from a variety of disciplines including Architecture and Design. In recognition of the physical limitations imposed by a dedicated space DCP also produced

occasional offsite and site-specific projects and events outside of the gallery space. The first of these off-site projects was the DCP presentation of Austin McQuinn’s “VIRTUOSO” at New Langton Arts in April, 2007.

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David Cunningham closed the Project space in 2010 and continued to curate challenging exhibitions in the Bay Area until his untimely death in 2015. 

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Read about DCP and David here

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