James Rielly , born in Wales in 1956, has taken part in exhibitions in Europe and North America: Sensation, in the Royal Academy in London, in the Brooklyn Museum of Art as well as in Birmingham in the UK where he was part of Sorted, in the IKON Gallery. He has had one man shows in CASA, Salamanca (2002), in the Fond Regional D’Art Contemporain Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France (2002), in Casual Influences, organised by the Oriel Mostyn Gallery, and in Sensible Ways, in the Musee des Beaux Arts in Nantes(1997). He has also had exhibitions of his work in the Spencer Brownstone Gallery in New York, in the Galerie Edward Mitterand in Geneva, (Switzerland), and in the Timothy Taylor Gallery in London. This is the first time James Rielly has shown in Madrid.
In his portraits, Rielly does not just give us people, but also the biographical aura around each of them, the subtle visual clues and the fine almost transparent marks of the events which have shaped their lives. These personal auras, atmospheres which are usually hidden from outsiders, are paradoxically revealed in his naked portraits of these people. What is paradoxical is that these portraits are utterly without photographic realism, being totally flat and transparent. The subjects of these paintings, mostly boys in the pre-pubertal phase, are exploring and getting up to the sort of mischief which will take them precariously through to adulthood. James Rielly is above all a painter, in spite of his hard work in collecting and interpreting photographs which explore the human condition. Painting after all is not only a means of communication but also an end in itself, the final phase of a complex process of synthesis and analysis; and most importantly all painting is imbued with an intangible magic. The exhibition which Galeria Distrito Cu4tro is now presenting is open to the public from 16th Oct. to 22nd. Nov. 2003.
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