Michael Carney

This work is part of Michael Carney’s solo exhibition, 'StadiumKraft'.

The stadium and the natural landscape are both sites imbued with duality and charged with memory and presence. The stadium witnesses victories and losses, greatness and failure, moments of silent composure and eruptions of sound. Whilst the uncontrolled vegetation of the forest is a battlefield of growth and decay, an elemental chaos housed within an interconnected ecology.

Fragments of these spaces collide and overlap within Carney’s painterly, dreamlike stadium-scapes. These repeated slippery forms in the works reflect the grounding themes of 'StadiumKraft': the distortion of space that can occur when memory is recalled. Carney’s paintings insert the viewer directly into the spectral landscapes. These places hold a lingering presence, where experience and emotion are ingrained within the tangible.

In 'StadiumKraft', Carney delves into the fluidity of memory, inviting viewers to engage with the changing boundaries between time, space, and emotion. Carney blends the familiar with the uncanny, creating an immersive space where memory, like nature, continuously evolves.

(From catalogue essay by Benen Hamon, 2025)