Aaron Kinnane

News

NEXT SHOW 23 NOVEMBER - 4 DECEMBER @ IAIN DAWSON GALLERY

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NEW PAINTINGS 'THE BANDIT MOON AND THE BASTARD SUN'
OPENING NIGHT FRIDAY 7th AUGUST 2009
CHARLES HEWITT GALLERY

The Bandit Moon and the Bastard Son

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The four snorting beasts underneath the Horsemen of the Apocalypse are not the exact same four painted here by Kinnane. But, as they say, the fruit never falls far from the goddamn tree. There is less black cruelty, certainly, less outright threat, here, safely, than in those ominous nostrils. Still, it has been many a night that the gun rattle of hooves on the stones outside has made its way into my sleep, and every time I look deeply into the lines between the old angels and the new, between the carnage of the past and that of today, there are goddamn horses everywhere and I can't stop them coming.

It was a giant horse that took the city of Troy, one morning, years ago. At least 20 hands high, this one had been hollowed out, preserved, and its belly filled up with wood shavings and small fighting men, their blood foaming and ready to be spilled in the service of a truly mad man driven illogical by love. There were horses on the battlefields of Cannae, back in the day when Hannibal stuck it to a million Romans, wading about fetlock deep in those things lost in wars. There were horses at Gallipoli and the Battle of Siler River, and it was on their backs that young men were carried into the history books or to muddy holes. From that day to this, it has been on their backs that we have ridden to our wondrous, ridiculous, and unimaginable destinies, banners streaming behind us in the wind, cavalcades of the murderous and the love struck raising all hell in the name of The Bandit Moon and The Bastard Son, the ruined countryside flying by like we was magic.

But I feel a little assuaged by these lanky grass eaters, the ones I see here that Kinnane has mustered out of his satchel. They are the ones that conversed with poor Gulliver, the ones that the poet rode, the steeds sent forth with a messenger and a small, silk purse to woo the long-haired maiden. I have heard about these goddamn nags. Despite their more noble breeding, it is an equally miserable history, this quest of sonnets and filtered sunlight and clearings in the forest and pilgrims with good intentions. For the road to hell is paved with good intentions. And it's a long, long road. So how do you think we got there? Ain't nobody walking, that's for goddamn sure. It was them beasts that carried us, singing and howling, thrashing about like illness or scanning the horizon for silhouettes, the ruined countryside flying by like we was magic.

Jake Lynch