Set adrift on Memory Bliss - Maus Contemporary - Dec 5, 2025 - Jan 8, 2026

'Harmony equational', 2025, oil on linen, 50cm x 40cm/19.69 in x 15.75 in

Paul Hallahan: Set adrift on Memory Bliss

MAUS CONTEMPORARY, 2411 SECOND AVENUE NORTH BIRMINGHAM, AL 35203

December 5, 2025 - January 8, 2026

opening reception: Friday, December 5 (6-8pm)

A selection of paintings by Dublin, Ireland-based artist Paul Hallahan, spanning from 2018 to 2025.

https://www.mauscontemporary.com/paul-hallahan-set-adrift-on-memory-bliss

Set Adrift on Memory Bliss takes its title from the PM Dawn song from the early 1990s. It has always stayed with me for its drifting sense of reflection and distance, for the way it holds calm and melancholy at the same time. That same feeling, of being suspended between presence and memory, is at the center of these paintings.

I have always been interested in the blurred image, in the moment when things begin to lose their edge and merge together. There is something truthful in that space, something that feels closer to how memory and perception actually operate. A sharply defined image can seem too certain, while a blurred one allows movement and change. It gives space for the imagination to become part of what is seen.

In all these works I use thin layers of paint on semi-transparent surfaces, so that light can move through them and alter what appears. Depending on where you stand, the paintings can shift, sometimes coming into focus before dissolving again into atmosphere. I want that instability to feel present, because it mirrors how experience and memory constantly reshape one another.

Painting for me is a way to stay inside that uncertainty. It allows for a kind of attention that is slow and unguarded, where looking becomes a form of thought. The title Set Adrift on Memory Bliss feels right because it speaks to that sense of drifting, of allowing memory and perception to carry you somewhere without the need to arrive.

These works are about that movement, the quiet rhythm between what is seen, what is remembered, and what might still be waiting to appear.

- Paul Hallahan, Dublin, Ireland, October 2025