The exhibition Threshold at Artbooth Gallery in Abu Dhabi, running through 6 December 2025, offers a compelling window into the evolving vision of Irish artist Richard Hearns. In this first solo presentation of his work in the UAE, he gathers a body of new canvases that explore gesture, memory, place, and the liminal zones between them.
The abstract paintings on display marry structured compositions with expressive mark-making: charcoal lines carve space, while prismatic colour and layered paint conjure imaginary landscapes. Through titles, layering, traces of earlier marks (pentimenti), and bold, atmospheric surfaces, Threshold offers viewers the opportunity to cross into liminal realms: spaces where memory, emotion, and the raw energy of creation converge.
In doing so, the exhibition positions painting as a visceral act, a kind of threshold itself, bridging the everyday world and deeper interior or universal experiences. It’s an invitation to engage with painting as a gesture of connection, memory, and transformation.
About the artist
Richard Hearns (b. 1980, Beirut, Lebanon) grew up in Dublin (Ireland). He studied at The Institute of Art, Design and Technology and The National College of Art and Design in Dublin, earning a Diploma in Fine Art and BFA in Interdisciplinary Digital Media (2001 and 2002), followed by a Higher Diploma in Art, Craft and Design Education (2004). Today, Hearns lives and works in the Burren National Park (County Clare, Ireland), an untamed landscape that deeply informs his practice.
Hearns began his career painting figurative works, still lifes, and landscapes, rooted in observational and representational painting. Over time, he shifted toward large-scale gestural abstraction, where bold strokes, layered surfaces, and dynamic mark-making serve as conduits for physicality, memory, and emotion. While Hearns’ practice has become increasingly nonfigurative, the discipline of drawing and his background in representational painting remain embedded within the structure of his canvases. Movement, materiality, composition, and colour are all central forces in the energetic balance of rigour and spontaneity that characterise his work.
Hearns’ dual Lebanese-Irish heritage also informs his art. Themes of belonging, inherited memory, displacement, and cultural multiplicity surface throughout his practice, giving his paintings a psychological and emotional depth that parallels their physical intensity.
The artist has showcased his creations in different exhibitions, such as Miart Milan 2025 (Italy); Sotheby’s, 76 rue du faubourg Saint-Honoré (Paris, France, 2023); The Cardinal’s Portrait (solo) (The Sheen Centre for Thought and Culture, New York, USA, 2019); and Künstler International Symposium (Villa Böhm, Neustadt an der Weinstraße, Germany, 2014), among others. His artworks are part of several public and institutional collections, including the Irish State Collection, St Patrick’s Cathedral (New York, USA), and Naomi House Children’s Hospice (UK).
To get more information about Threshold, please visit the exhibition’s official web page.
Additionally, you might be interested in exploring Improvisations at Gallery Isabelle.
