Cork urban artist says artwork should be accessible to all ahead of new show in London
A Fin DAC mural in Mexico (West Contemporary Editions/Fin DAC/PA)
Irish urban artist Fin DAC has said he does not feel artwork should be âinaccessibleâ or viewers made to feel like âfools for not understandingâ the concept.
The Cork-born artist, known for his large scale murals which depict women with piercing stares in bold colours, is launching his first solo show in three years which will display a new series that blends his style with that of some of his favourite artists.
His approach, which he has dubbed âurban aestheticsâ, breaks away from the political approach typically associated with street artists like the elusive Banksy.
The artist told the PA news agency he did not see any reason to compete with Banksyâs popular satirical work and instead wanted to created something âcompletely differentâ.
âI made a definite decision in my early days to not make my work political at allâ, he said.
âI have a terminology for my art, which is called urban aesthetics and thatâs based on a group of creatives from the late 19th to early 20th century and they had a motto that art should only concern itself with beautification and not socio or political commentary.
âAnd because my work was different to a lot of the street artists that were around at the time, the Banksy style was very, very popular. Not just because of Banksy. There were lots of other artists who were doing very, very similar workâŠ
âI wanted to make mine something completely different.â
The artist sees his approach of âbeautifying the urban landscapeâ as an âimportantâ pursuit for all outdoor areas.
âI donât think that art and artwork should be inaccessible to anybody or I donât think anybody should be made to feel like theyâre fools for not understanding what theyâre looking at,â he said.
âI do think that I have a very simplistic approach to what I do. I paint portraiture. Portraiture is something thatâs come down through the annals of art history.
âYou donât have to know anything about art or even representation to understand what youâre looking at with my work.â
His work also places women, typically of Asian heritage, at the forefront and looking back at the viewer as he wanted to challenge the âmale gazeâ aesthetic that was common at the time he started out as an artist.
âI felt it was too easy to draw women in a sexualised way and also too popular and too prominent,â he said.
âAnd definitely, I think I pre-empted all the stuff thatâs going on now with feminism (art). I donât want to speak for women but I did want the depictions to be slightly more well-rounded.â
His new show HomEage, which will be held at the St Martins Lane Crypt Gallery in London from Friday, pays tribute to famed artists â including Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso and Vincent Van Gogh â by merging their individual styles with his usual depiction of Eurasian women.
Starting the project in 2020 while in lockdown in California, he turned to artists who he had grown up with to connect with his home roots.
He said: âThey are my artworks. Iâm just recreating the second half of the artwork in the style of somebody else.
âAnd that, to me, is a kind of a metaphor of just dressing women up in a different way. Iâm taking a style or colours or line types that are associated with a different artist, and Iâm literally just putting them over the top of my own depictions.
âThey donât look that different from my depictions, theyâre not meant to, so it is just a way of representing the female form in another way, but actually still having it almost exactly the same, like the foundation is still the same. Itâs just the makeup thatâs applied thatâs slightly different.â
Fin DACâs new pop-up exhibition HomEage, curated by West Contemporary Editions, will open at the St Martins Lane Crypt Gallery in London on October 25 and a limited-edition collectorâs box set trilogy will be available.
