Sign language in Art

By T.J. McNAMARA

The sign of the times is signs. All of the paintings under discussion this week use a sign language. In the past they might have been called symbols but these signs are so oblique, so full of hints and irony that viewers must make what they can of them. Symbols occupy an agreed territory, signs just point the way.

In his work at Artspace, John Reynolds uses many signs quite literally since again and again he uses finger-pointing signposts. The signposts point to place names that have had a part in his development. The signs along the way also point to artists, poets and philosophers and even individual works of art that have had an influence on his life's journey so far.

The work is a journey in itself. It marches around the walls of one small gallery, goes through the door and around the walls of an adjacent long room. As we travel there is a lot to read as most of the sheets that make up the work contain writing. Writing is an abstract sign for a sound and the sounds are themselves signs for a concept.

The reading is not only the names and places on the signposts but also invocations and prayers. Lists of words begin with the same letter and sound, if you read them aloud like an invocation or chant. Quotations are there, too, from such things as the bleak poem about the squawking noise from an organ grinder by Wilhelm Muller, the last poem set by Schubert in his cycle Winter Journey.

Some of the abstract grids that form the panels are a squawk, too. They are awkward and show places where the artist got lost. Other eventful moments are marked by a bare tree which also evokes the Cross and the journey of Calvary.

All this at times reads as more than a little inflated. Is the artist's journey a melodrama? If we interpret the signs that establish his journey to maturity, do we care? Is this long, autobiographical quest which must be studied through hints, allusions and abstract forms worth the effort?

The answer is a muted rather than a hearty Yes. When the references are so personal, identification is inhibited. Art should link personal with general experience.

Here sympathy and empathy are required in full measure. You have to agree that the artist's effort is valuable in itself and that the artist is important. If you don't care, the sheets of paper will hang dead on the wall for you.

More universal are the two huge paintings that occupy the main gallery. Here Reynolds has denied himself everything except one sign: a neat little intersection, a cross that is roughly arranged in squares and multiplied in mind-boggling numbers across these works. The little cross is like a leaf, always the same, always different. Each of these paintings is a forest of a single species of tree.

The analogy does not quite work since a forest has depth and these little forms energise only the surface of the work.

On this surface, changes of colour produce dim forms like curious memories. These paintings are about the multiplicity of life and the dimness of our perceptions.

The staging of an exhibition at a semi-public gallery such as Artspace is a recognition of Reynolds' substantial status as an artist and the paintings are an extraordinary achievement, yet like much of his work they remain dry and distant. The mind admires but the heart does not warm to them.

Just across the road at the Ivan Anthony Gallery, Richard Killeen is showing new work. Each piece is a single sign or token done on flat aluminium, irregular in shape and hung at odd heights.

Each of these little works is a distilled essence of a concept, a design feat that makes an utterly simple, flat image. Sometimes the works are given a political spin, others refer to art. Some are art-political like Local Face, where the features are formed from the grossly overworked and politically touchy koru. Some of these signs are just too simple and work only when illuminated by a title.

Left Brain Right Brain is clever but visually dull. The little perception games work best when the signs have real wit in their design like the realistic and cubist fish in Good Fish Bad Fish and the fierce Big Dog Little Dog and visitors should look for James Joyce's suitcase hung near the ceiling.

The show is called Sign and the most significant sign in the whole exhibition is Ouroboros, where snakes devour their own tail. Signs about signs may feed on their own excitement and leave the viewer out of the circle.

Everybody who visits the show by Reynolds will end up squinting with half-closed eyes trying to make out the wood for the trees and, for all its quiet elegance, something of the same process is stimulated by the exhibition called Twofold by Kirsty Gorman at the Anna Bibby Gallery.

These works are also about memory. Each one is in two parts. One part shows a spray of flowers delineated by what at first seems a random dance of indents, holes or dots. Only hard looking reveals the forms of leaves. The other side of the painting is usually a pale and tender square on square. This part of the painting is more regular and sometimes contains dots falling like rain and in some works a spray of leaves and flowers pale but explicit.

This side is dominated by verticals and these are often beautifully ordered systems of threads on the surface of the painting. Contrasts in atmosphere, the impress of the past on present reality and the need for order in our memory are combined with surfaces and colour of the utmost delicacy in this quiet, unassertive, charming exhibition.