This show, billed as an installation of wall drawings, was more a series of pictures that were missing their supports. The twenty-odd pieces were spaced around the Draíocht ground-floor gallery in a fairly regular bathtub sequence. Doors and windows did get some attention but to get to grips with the awkward space the drawings could have been more expansive.

Fabien Verschaere: from I've got you under my Skin , 2003; installation, watercolour and felt pen on gallery wall; courtesy Draíocht

The imagery fused an assortment of religious, sexual and mythological references. Lots of crucifixes, penises, women, flowers, skulls, testicles and animals appearing in various freakish combinations. These antics take place in and around caricatures of the artist who appears in various guises as a devil, angel, fairy, and even decapitated.

The work had the same juvenile coarse humour as schoolboy copybook doodles or public-toilet graffiti. His darker side is, however, a rather faux-nightmare scenario, which is neither shocking nor provocative. Maybe I was looking for something that wasn't there; as one penis drawing exclaimed "Philosophy is a bad alibi."

Alan Phelan

Fabien Verschaere: I've got you under my Skin , Draíocht, Blanchardstown, December 2003 / January 2004

 

Article reproduced from CIRCA 107, Spring 2004, p. 103.

Do you have an opinion on this news item? If so, please click here for our comments form.

Back to top of page