The paintings in ‘Cell Theory’ are peppered with references to medieval systems and structures; a fountain’s plumbing, architectural studies, diagrammatic renderings of heaven and hell. Egan conflates imagery from micro-biology with macro-cosmology, observing that the world, when viewed extremely close-up or impossibly far away, appears as clusters of much the same colliding, spinning discs.
Egan’s paintings are built up incrementally over richly coloured underpainting, with delicate strokes that coalesce in luminous patches of colour. Often the works germinate from a direct image-referent, such as in ‘Decreation Machine’ (2025), which began as a faithful rendition of Messina’s ‘Pietá’ (1476). Through a gradual act of painting, the image-referent is atomised and abstracted — composition as decomposition. The figures of Christ and the angels who support Him in the ‘Pietá’, are broken down into constituent cells, their bodies fragmenting into shards of painted colour, like sunlight streaming through stained glass.
The painting ‘Table turning’ (2025). makes reference to the spiritualist practice in which a group of people make séance with spirits by collectively tilting a table. Layered atop a group dinner setting, a line of cells bounces through a system of pipes. This structure recalls a network of plumbing, a digestive tract, or a chain of beads passed through fingers. This form’s ambiguity alludes to the potential for bodily cells to take on a multiplicity of roles depending on circumstance, desire, or need. The repeated motif of dinner plates invites the viewer to approach the paintings with the mouth as well as the eye — conceptualising viewing as a metabolic procedure. Simone Weil suggests that our greatest affliction “is that looking and eating are two different operations.” Weil writes, “Eternal beatitude is a state where to look is to eat.” Egan embraces this provocation by offering us paintings that are to be chewed slowly and with thoughtful attention.
‘Cell Theory’ is accompanied by an essay written by Pip Wallis, Senior Curator, Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA).
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David has exhibited regularly for the past decade including the solo exhibitions ‘Fountain Gate’, Neon Parc (2022); ‘Green Seeks Little Attention’, Hayden’s Gallery, (2021); ‘CRYING ROOM’, Sutton Projects, (2019); ‘A Moveable Priest’, Bus Projects, (2018); ‘Actually Energy Help Light’, curated by Helen Hughes, Gertrude Contemporary, (2015); ‘Out Land Look Scape’, West Space, (2015); ‘Painting Playing Cards’, Substation, (2014) all in Naarm/Melbourne.
Egan’s work has been included in survey shows such as ‘Thin Skin’, MUMA (2023); ‘Painting. More Painting’, ACCA (2016); ‘Fabrik; conceptual, minimalist and performative approaches to textiles’, Ian Potter Museum of Art and Margret Lawrence Gallery of Art (2016).
David’s book of essays on colour in painting, Colour Handling, was published by Discipline in 2022.
David is a Lecturer in the Department of Fine Art at Monash University, where he received his PhD in 2022.
From July 2025 he will commence a studio residency at Gertrude Contemporary.
