Project Description

About

Born in Ireland in 1950, Michael Warren lives and works in the countryside of County Wexford, Ireland. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and completed his studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Milano, Italy. Over the past thirty years he has regularly exhibited in Dublin, Paris, Cologne, the United States and across the globe. Warren works in bronze, timber, stone, steel and concrete. An artisan’s love of material and technique is combined with a keen comprehension of Western philosophy. Always stripping things to the essential; the simplest form revealing enormous potency. His commitment and achievement have long been recognised in his native Ireland where he was elected as a member of Aosdána in 1981 and as a member of the Royal Hibernian Academy in 2008, with significant decorations and honours too from many other countries’ governments and universities. He has created some of the most challenging public sculpture of the last decades. Warren has made large-scale sculptures in Andorra, Ecuador, England, France, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Morocco, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Taiwan, United States of America and the West Indies. His work is included in important collections worldwide.

“There is always a metaphysical preoccupation at its heart… In Warren’s basic language of form, the twin axes, horizontal and vertical, and physical forces and pressures, are the stage on which the drama of being is played out. A striving, upward momentum, a pull to earth, a tearing apart and a concentrated though tenuous presence: all figure in pieces that refer to being and embodiment in tragic terms of struggle and redemption.”Aidan Dunne

“This is a sculpture that reaches back beyond both the informal play and arbitrary ahistorical referencing of the postmodern and the formalist rigours of purist high modernism to forms and presentations of other, older cultures. It does this with scrupulous intellectual principle, and with a characteristically unorthodox aesthetic economy.”Mel Gooding

Work

Solo Exhibitions

  • 2022 Michael Warren: From the Studio, Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin, Ireland
  • 2015 Michael Warren, Galerie Weiller, Paris, France
  • 2014 Michael Warren at Four Seasons Hotel Dublin, Ballsbridge, Dublin, Ireland
  • 2014 Michael Warren, Limerick City Art Gallery, Limerick, Ireland
  • 2013 All on that Day, The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon, Ireland
  • 2012 Predella, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, Ireland
  • 2010 Kireji, Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin, Ireland
  • 2010 Unbroken Line (Retrospective), VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow, Ireland
  • 2008 M-7-23, CDAN, Centro de Arte y Naturaleza, Huesca, Spain
  • 2008 Footfalls (with Patrick Graham), Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin, Ireland
  • 2008 Expo ’08, Zaragoza, Spain
  • 2007 Of Weight and Wings, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin
  • 2007 Michael Warren, Galerie Weiller, Paris
  • 2006 Hypothetical Imperative, homage to Samuel Beckett, RHA, Dublin
  • 2005 Angel Negro, Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin
  • 2004 Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast
  • 2004 Small Works, Vangard Gallery, Cork
  • 2004 Michael Warren – Dispositions, Butler Gallery, Kilkenny, Ireland
  • 2003 Amor Fati, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
  • 2002 Light, Gravity and Distance, Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland
  • 1998 Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast
  • 1996 Galerie Der Spiegel, Cologne, Germany
  • 1996 Calendar, Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland
  • 1996 Galerie Slotine, Le Harve, France
  • 1996 Galerie Weiller, Paris, France
  • 1995 Simple Measure, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
  • 1992 Galerie Gardy Wiechern, Hamburg, Germany
  • 1991 Galerie Der Spiegel, Cologne, Germany
  • 1989 Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
  • 1985 Galerie Der Spiegel, Cologne, Germany
  • 1984 Solomon Gallery, Dublin, Ireland
  • 1983 Meredith Long Gallery, Houston, Texas, USA
  • 1982 Galerie Charley Chevalier, Paris, France
  • 1981 Art Council Gallery, Belfast, Northern Ireland
  • 1980 Sculpture 69-80, Letatlin, Gorey, Ireland

Selected Group Exhibitions

  • 2018 Basil Blackshaw / Patrick Graham / Michael Warren, Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin, Ireland
  • 2015 Meraviglia: Sandro Chia, Enzo Cucchi, Michael Warren, Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin, Ireland
  • 2015 Fragments, Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), Dublin, Ireland
  • 2015 Euroscope – Collection of the European Investment Bank, Cercle Cité, Luxembourg
  • 2014 Gibbons, Walker, Warren, Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin, Ireland
  • 2013 One Foot in the Real World, Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), Dublin, Ireland
  • 2013 Iron & Steel, Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin, Ireland
  • 2013 VUE, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, Ireland
  • 2011 Three Plus, Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin
  • 2010 The Moderns, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
  • 2009 The Weight of Light: Irish Abstraction, VISUAL, Carlow, Ireland
  • 2009 Between Metaphor and Object, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
  • 2008 Plastik und Zeichnung, Galerie Der Spiegel, Cologne, Germany
  • 2007 International Works, Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin, Ireland
  • 2006 Inaugural, Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin, Ireland
  • 2006 Here, there and otherwise, Broadstone Gallery and Studios, Dublin, Ireland
  • 2005 SIAR 50, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland
  • 2004 Art for Amnesty, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland
  • 2003 Manif 2003, Seoul Arts Center, Seoul, Korea
  • 2000 Artists’ Century – Irish Self-Portraits and Selected Works 1900-2000, RHA Gallery, Dublin; OBG, Belfast
  • 1999 Exposition en l’honneur de Gerard Xuriguera, Châternay-Malaery, France
  • 1999 Wood – A Sculptural Investigation, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada
  • 1998 EV A 98 – circus zz, St Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick, Ireland
  • 1998 Éigse, Carlow Arts Festival, St Patrick’s College, Carlow, Ireland
  • 1996 l’Imaginaire Irlandais, Galerie Lahumière, Paris, France
  • 1996 Regards sur la Sculpture Contemporaine, Espace Belleville, Paris, France
  • 1996 Innovation from Tradition, Justus Lipius Building, Brussels, Belgium
  • 1994 Reconnection, Limerick City Gallery of Art, Ireland
  • 1994 Aspects de Sculptures Contemporaines, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Clermont-Ferrand, France
  • 1992 Irish Art of the Eighties, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
  • 1990 Contemporary Artists from Ireland, Austin Desmond Fine Art, London, England
  • 1990 Irish Art – The European Dimension, RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin, Ireland
  • 1988 Olympiad of Art, Olympic Sculpture Park, Seoul, Korea
  • 1985 Rosc – 9 Irish Artists, Armstrong Gallery, New York, USA
  • 1984 Rosc ’84, Guinness Hop Store, Dublin, Ireland
  • 1982 1ère Biennale Européenne de Sculptures de Normandie, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Jouy-sur-Eure, Normandy, France
  • 1982 Carnegie International, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, USA
  • 1980 The International Connection, Round House Gallery, London, England