February 4, 2012- April 14, 2012

Opening reception Saturday, February 4, 2012, 7 - 9 pm
Enjoy some small bites while sampling wine  provided by Roche Winery or a bottle of Magners Irish Cider. Curated by Peter Selz

Supported in part by  Culture Ireland

San Francisco, CA - In a rare opportunity to view the works of Ireland’s most influential contemporary artist, Meridian Gallery will display over 35 works by the artist Patrick Graham, including paintings, collages, and drawings.  This exhibition contains four of his monumental iconic diptychs. Two of these pieces, Wreath and Somewhere Jerusalem, evoke the sense of ceremony, ritual, and a longing for space and homeland.  Organized by Meridian Gallery, the exhibition will tour under the gallery’s auspices to; Katzen Museum of Art at American University(June 9, 2012-August 12, 2012) and the Museum of Contemporary Religious Art at Saint Louis University (September 23, 2012-December 16 2012).    The exhibition will include a full-color catalog. 

“Graham is widely considered Ireland’s major contemporary painter; Graham’s paintings indeed have vistas that cannot be measured, his figures are fragmented, wounded humans, they are vulnerable, but promise endurance.”

            -     Curator Peter Selz

Graham has always created meditations in the form of landscapes and iconic imagery that touch upon questions pertaining to reality, the meaning of life, and the search for faith in a world of diminishing absolutes.

“The landscape has influenced my work right up to the present, particularly the low horizon; and that great vista where you can encounter space, and figures in it, in all kinds of ways….Silences. No conversations. A looking-in, rather than a lived experience. That ‘looking-in on things’ has stayed with me: a self-contained art.”

        -    Patrick Graham
             “Interior Visions.” Irish Arts Review

Graham’s work has also been the subject of exhibitions and symposiums internationally, including the National Gallery of Ireland, the Berkeley Art Museum, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Trinity College, Walker Art Gallery in England, the Hokkaido Museum in Japan, the University of Michigan, Northeastern University, and Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Works are selected from Jack Rutberg Fine Arts (LA),  Graham’s international agent.

Additional information and related public programs available at: www.MeridianGallery.org.  Images from the exhibition for press purposes available upon request.

Interview with Peter Selz

Jarrett Earnest is an artist and  PhD student in Art History at the Graduate Center, CUNY and was the former assistant to the driector at Meridian Gallery.  He's written an incredible interview with the great art historian, curator and museum director, Peter Selz. Published in the June issue of The Brooklyn Rail.