Irene O’Callaghan

Irene O’Callaghan was born in 1988 in Boston (USA); she is currently living and working in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Irene O’Callaghan is a visual artist and photographer who doesn’t limit her practice to specific media. She works mainly with photography, drawing and text and her artwork sometimes consists of multiple elements integrated into complex art installations. In her photographic works, she is fascinated by the representation of objects and the coincidence of situations, which is reflected in her ontological way of using photography. Her images, by questioning the photographic process open new perspectives of exploration of the subject and the object. She studied photography at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and minor Esthetics at the University of Amsterdam. She obtained a Master Fine Arts at the Sandberg Instituut, part of the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, in 2013.

As for Irene O ‘Callaghan, the installation device also allows her to create fortuitous links and associations where the formal aspect and the personal anecdote intermingle. Fascinated by the representation of objects or details of objects, the result of an ontological approach to photography, she recreates situations of similarities and ruptures. For example, her large photograph of a child diving into the blue pool reminds us of the Fall of Icarus, in a contemporary version of the myth that speaks to us of dreams and reality. Sensitive to the world around them, Irene O’Callaghan seeks out images that allow them to deconstruct genres and representations and reinvent a resolutely contemporary universe full of poetry, tension and dialectical subtleties.

(Source : Paul di Felice)