Squaring the Circle by Sean W MacNeil
at Brick Aux Gallery – 628 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211
Working with graphite and paper, Sean W. MacNeil uses stunning precision to create evocative drawings that chart the conscious and unconscious stages of an epileptic seizure. He maps the epileptic experience, from momentary bliss to blackness and the strange, painful reawakening that follows. The 16 works that comprise SQUARING THE CIRCLE, MacNeil’s first solo show, are marked by a pathos that could only come from his lived experience as an epileptic. But the works don’t need to exist solely in this context. They have a universal resonance that elevates them beyond their subject matter. MacNeil probes the unknowable states of being, where no past or future exists, and examines how a kind of momentary death can give way to new perspectives. His work wrestles with great mystery, with haunting beauty and profound suffering, and seeks to square the circle of life’s many complexities.