In his new exhibition Irish artist Eamon O’Kane presents new prints which explore memory, psychology and the natural world. The screen prints in the exhibition take their inspiration from the Baum Test, which is also known as the “Tree Test” and is a projective test developed by Swiss psychologist Charles Koch in 1952. It is used extensively across the world as a method of analyzing an individual’s personality and underlying emotional history. The prints are also inspired by another better known psychoanalytic tool the Rorschach or ink blot test. The prints are made from hand drawings of trees in Bergen and elsewhere in Scandinavia. O’Kane uses himself as a subject and prints the same mirrored trees over and over again entering in a meditative state in the process.
Eamon O’Kane (born 1974, Belfast, Northern Ireland) explores the ideological tropes and visual forms of modernist architecture in his paintings and immersive sculptural installations. He received his B.A. in the History of Art and Fine Art at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, Ireland in 1996 and went on to earn his M.F.A. at the University of Ulster, Belfast in 1998 and later an additional M.F.A. in Design Technology at Parsons School of Design, New York in 2001. O’Kane has exhibited internationally, and recent solo exhibitions include The Model Arts Centre, Sligo, Ireland (2022); Galerie DGV, Svendborg, Denmark (2022); Galerie Andres Thalmann, Zuirch, Switzerland (2020); Josef Filipp Galerie, Leipzig, Germany (2019); Crawford Municipal Gallery, Cork, Ireland (2019); Funen Art Museum, Odense, Denmark (2019); and Gregory Lind Gallery, San Francisco, CA, USA (2016). His work is held in the public collections of Burda Museum, Baden Baden, Germany; Lentos Art Museum, Linz, Austria; Museum of Fine Arts, Brest, France; META/Facebook, Dublin and The Arts Council Collection, Ireland. He has been awarded Norwegian Arts Council Grant (2020) and the EV+A Biennial Award (2005) and previously a Fulbright Award, Pollock Krasner Foundation Award, and Taylor Art Award. His monographs include Eamon O’Kane: And Time Begins Again (University of Bergen, 2019); Hybrids (Academy of Art and Design, Norway, 2013); and Case Histories (ArtSway and Rugby Art Museum, UK, 2009). He is Professor of Painting at The Art Academy, KMD, University of Bergen and currently lives and works in Bergen and Odense.