Alternative Entertainments present The Place of Memory, an exhibition of oil paintings by Sicilian born artist Gaetano Tranchino.

Artist: Gaetano Tranchino
Born in Sicily in 1938, The Place of Memory is the first showing of Gaetano's work in Ireland.

The Place of Memory
For Tranchino, unlike many artists of his generation, the haunting at the heart of his work is connected with the persistence of love, of affection, of mystery and of memory itself. In this sense, and on that often deeply troubled island, his work is celebratory, poetic and ultimately life affirming. The vibrant colours and sensuous forms, the inviting perspective and humanizing presences of his trade-mark figures (the reader, the thinker, the dog-walker, the dreamer) all suggest an enviable and all-too-rare contentment.

To paint in Sicily is to be aware of the fleeting nature of time, the rise and fall of so many empires, and, paradoxically, of the enduring power of art to place a single gesture or brushstroke before the eyes of generations. To paint in Sicily is to work with a pallet of colours few northern Europeans may wield with the same casual confidence, or the same mediated feeling.

At once haunting and life affirming, Gaetano Tranchino’s paintings are also undoubtedly beautiful. One is put in mind of Sicily’s most famous modern writer, the late Leonardo Sciascia (a close friend, as it happens), who in a well-known short story* has one of his characters praise the Sicilian landscape for “a beauty so obvious that it would dazzle even an idiot”. The same can be said with confidence of Tranchino’s work which makes even those who have never been to his homeland wish to go there again.

*from the short story ‘The Wine-Dark Sea’

Dates:                  19th April - 22nd May
Time:                   Mon to Sat, 10am – 6pm
Admission:           FREE