Le Hublot d'Ivry is an exhibition space in the Greater Paris area that was recently the subject of a feature article in the print edition of the bilingual French and English art journal Art Press, where it was called "A Beacon of Light."
I am pleased to be showing two separate pieces there from November 3 to 17, 2023. These two paintings were painted between 2019 and 2021; both were started before the successive lockdowns of the initial Covid-19 pandemic and both went through significant stylistic changes over this period of time.
In my painting practice, over the course of sessions of work, a painting usually progresses to a point where edges become cleaner and forms more defined. The space of the composition becomes more coherent and the painting overall points towards a more naturalistic figurative style.
The two pieces being shown at the Hublot d'Ivry, in contrast, do not seek this naturalistic resolution but emphasize the movement of the painting's becoming, where light and air overtake mimetic forms and figures are broken-up and space becomes vectors of movement.
Impossible Home, Oil on linen, 89 x 116 cm, 2019-2021.
The title was taken from a collection of poems by Yau Ching with paintings by Siu Yi Ky, published in Hong Kong in 2000. The idea of an impossible home is one of exile perhaps, or at least of displacement and not only in terms of geography but also in terms of states of being, a sense of not belonging, and a weary understanding of not always being welcome.
The progress of this painting over time can be visualized in this video sequence--
La Réapparition, Oil on linen, 89 x 116 cm, 2019-2021
On a Parisian street, the quintessential Parisian writer, Georges Perec, stands, making notes in his carnet while the elements of the city are fractured by the air and the light. Perec famously wrote a novel, La Disparition, without ever using the letter "E" and in this painting, the letter E reappears in great number, like a legion of insects crawling through the streets and the buildings of the city. Perec was an orphan, his parents were sent off to the concentration camps during the Nazi Occupation of France. Their disappearance was no doubt the essential missing element of his childhood and this painting is a fanboy's hommage to one of his favourite authors.
Le Hublot d'Ivry - November 3 to 17, 2023