John Cronin

Artificial Bee Colony

Coming March 14th- May 3rd 2024

Opening Reception Thursday March 14th 18:00-20:00 hrs

John Cronin's Artificial Bee Colony exhibition of new paintings opens in the Green On Red Gallery on Thursday, 14 March, 2024. The exhibition will continue until Friday, 3 May.

Cronin has been concerned with painting in the age of artificial intelligence and digitalisation for decades. He titles this series after the artificial bee colony ( abc ) algorithm. His previous Warme Nights, Sweet Dews, Fat Grounde and Misty Mornings ( 2017 ) - the conditions for hand-harvesting saffron - also put it up to the dominance of the digital in our post-post-modern world. Nothing can imitate these hand-wrought painting processes, these passages full of orchestrated chance and accident mixed with exuberant restraint.

" This algorithm is a swarm-based optimisation technique that simulates the foraging behaviours of honeybees and is used to solve continuous optimisation problems. The algorithm, however, has several drawbacks, such as difficulty in solving discrete optimisation problems and is susceptible to numerical noise, " Cronin says.

His abstract paintings are made by applying thick, luscious oil paint which becomes broken down compositionally and materially into cracked, dried material alongside rivers of organic paint. Vibrant colours are layered with varying degrees of opacity and translucency to create sometimes similar compositions but always dense and different worlds.

The arrival of AI in our daily lives is taken on by Cronin due to the perpetuating feedback loop " that can degrade the abilities and experiences that people consider essential to being human at a time when the world is coming to terms with historical, racial and gender injustices ".

As technological advancements evolve, society's access to visual media is enhanced and multiplied.

We invite you to explore this visual tangle with the algorithm at Green On Red Gallery over the next 2 months.

In John Yau's 2013 Hyperallergic article *Too Big for His Pond*, he recognizes **Cronin**'s passion for abstract painting and a uniqueness in his purpose. **" Rather than unpacking a bag of tricks, which seems true of many stylish postmodern abstract painters, a sense of urgency comes across in these works**. "

This sense of urgency continues here in **Cronin**'s *ABC* paintings.

**" At the heart of Cronin’s paintings is his obvious fascination with mutation as something that is wondrous, frightening and inescapable. "** John Yau

Above : John Cronin Artificial Bee Colony 2 ( Feedback Loop ) 2023 Oil on canvas 182 x 122 cm ( Detail )

New York art critic Donald Kuspit describes Cronin's work as romantic, yet concentrated, in his 2005 essay on Cronin, . He claims : " Modernist painting had become routinely matter of fact and boring, but in Cronin it once again becomes a source of tangible pleasure. " There is an intimacy that allows a " deeper emotional as well as sensuous experience. "

Palinode : Modernist Painting Redivivus by Donald Kuspit; John Cronin & Green On Red Gallery, Dublin 2005, p. 5.