walsh independent

Bloom Time: Jumping for Joyce:
Contemporary Painters Revel in the World of James Joyce, at the Francis Kyle Gallery

Jumping for Joyce: Contemporary Painters Revel in the World of James Joyce, Francis Kyle Gallery, London W1 to 25 September 2013

One of the highlights is the work of Alain Senez, a Paris born realist who almost won the Prix de Rome in 1968 when he was just 20 and picked up a rave review from Balthus. His triptych of paintings, Dublin, Trieste and Paris, is wonderful three interiors, each suggestive of melancholy, regret and faded grandeur, each with a barely glimpsed exterior, a road or path or sea offering an escape.

Paris is a beautiful rendering of Shakespeare & Company, the Paris bookshop owned by Sylvia Beach who first published Ulysses in 1922. But here the shop is a bar, in whose smoky gloom Joyce himself can be seen flanked by half recognisable arty figures (is that James Stephens? Is that Oliver Gogarty?) as if at some Last Supper, just before his ascent to heaven on publication day.”

Extract from an article by John Walsh, The Independent , 28 July 2013.