JOHN MCALLISTER: SHINING SERENEST-LIKE WILDS WHIRL
MASSIMODECARLO is delighted to present John McAllister’s exhibition shining serenest-like wilds whirl, a series of paintings of landscapes under different conditions.
November 21, 2024 - January 24, 2025
McAllister creates landscapes through intuitive explorations within nature, using the enigmatic play of light and colour to conjure up scenes of beauty and emotional resonance that focus on the phenomenological elements of nature rather than the illustrative. Many of the works in this exhibition were conceived in pairs, showing the same landscape both in bloom and alive with fire.
The two types of landscape in shining serenest-like wilds whirl present nature in moments of transition, both accentuated by human beings' persistent desire to create an ideal landscape and impose their ingenuity upon it. McAllister’s arcadian landscapes hint at human interference as plants with far-flung origins intermingle with native species, while their counterpart infernos show how nature can react when our efforts to mould it are pushed too far.
A preoccupation in McAllister’s paintings are states of being and gazing, how a painting and how nature act in a similar way as you experience them. McAllister’s paintings encourage us into the same state of reverie and wonder that nature inspires, the active act of gazing into a painting as our eyes trip over their different elements and our thoughts begin to wander. Like in nature, where we might focus on a particular flower before stepping back to take in the vista, McAllister’s paintings allow us to breathe in and relish in the scene. As you focus in, the artist’s precisely defined mark-making and the artifice that has made this swathe of beauty possible, becomes apparent. When the beauty of nature is so overwhelming that it stops us in our tracks is the jumping off point of McAllister’s dreamlike scenes.
Within the exhibition spaces shining serenest-like wilds whirl creates a total environment across a spectrum of states of nature and harmonious colour, akin to being immersed in nature. But, unlike losing oneself in nature, which happens externally to the body, McAllister’s paintings encourage internal reverie, as our mind pieces together the dense tapestry of carefully placed brushstrokes and prismatic palette as representative of something else, sparking thoughts and allusions to land at the complete scene of beauty in the picture we see in front of us.