Canvas presents "Sinks & Reservoirs", a body of new work from Alan Boardman. The exhibition comprises of a series of photographs, digital images and paintings that use the laws of thermodynamics as an approach to image making. The resulting hierarchy of generated images represent the differing stages of energy flow and dissipation.

"The core inspiration for this new series of works comes from an interest in the structural similarities of social, economic and biological systems. These systems are drawn together through their foundation in the laws of thermodynamics. With these laws in mind I have experimented with the vocabulary of paint and developed a series of pieces analogous to natural or artificial systems.

Like these systems, the paintings display layers of structural organization contrasted with an arbitrary reduction of the surface. They are systems structurally coupled with their medium. As such, the paintings constructive process mirrors a structure that is a thermodynamically open system operating in an environment with which it exchanges energy and matter with external reservoirs. The complexity of these structures increases as the flow moves cyclically from source to sink. As these structures tend towards maximum entropy, they can become flat systems, where no real expansion or contraction occurs, or closed systems, that are violently collapsing into themselves.

Thick, structural grids of paint are drawn over an aluminium surface. This layer is shaped by the flows of liquid material across the gradient of the surface to form patterns of organization and self-similar branching structures. The material pools in reservoirs or escapes through sinks. The process repeats itself until exhausted. A self-referential statement is made through a process of linear and mechanical reduction of the surface, a part of the cyclical exchange between opposites.

Each painting is a dissipative structure surrounded by a semi-permeable high-gloss membrane. This reflective surface continues its exchange with the external environment. The gallery space becomes the reservoir or sink.

Deleuze referred to these systems as ‘bodies without organs’. The BWO is seen as the slow solid flows of living things. These bodies are composed of sets of flows moving at various speeds (rocks and mountains as very slow moving flows; living things as flows of genetic material; language as flows of information, etc). A cancerous BWO is one caught in an endless reproduction of the self-same pattern."

Alan Boardman is an Irish painter based in Cork. He graduated from Limerick College of Art & Design in 2003 with a First Class Honours Degree in Fine Art Painting. Selected exhibitions include: 'Presence', Limerick City Gallery (2007); 'Rotfabrik', solo show; The Crow Gallery, Dublin (2007); Fenton Gallery, (2007); Affordable Art Fair, New York (2007); Microsoft Ireland Art Collection 19th Exhibition (2006); 'A Hybrid Account', Bank of Ireland Arts Centre (2006); EV&A (2005)and The Hunt Museum, Limerick (2001 & 2002). His work is in the collections of: The Hunt Museum Limerick; Microsoft Ireland Art Collection; Office of Public Works; Bank of Ireland Art Collection and Mason, Hayes + Curran.

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