CLYDE HOPKINS - Paintings 2000 - 2017, 15th November - 12th December, Private View 14th November, 6 - 8pm, BLOND CONTEMPORARY, 7 Piccadilly Arcade, SW1Y 6NH.
“… (the paintings are) tough and put together with a cool lightness of hand which conceals the lucid pictorial intelligence which has gone into their making.”
This new body of paintings combines aerial landscapes and floating shapes - figuration, colour-fields, texture and abstraction. ‘Kites' are seen from above - painted with brush, roller and airbrush. They are textured and evidence process and changes in direction through overlapping layers. They show clean, machine-like fades and colour blocks that overwrite thoughts, mistakes and past potential futures.
When we talked about his current position relative to his painting, his reference to a previous Stuart Cumberland as the author of the work suggested that there might be rich parallels to be drawn between working with Cumberland’s painting, working with an artist’s estate and questions of authorship around painting and post-conceptual painting in particular.
Neil Hamon, Transfigured Night (In-through-and-out-of-itself).
Part 1: Handmade mirror elements created using silver extracted from an original 16mm print of George A. Romero’s film ‘Night of the Living Dead’ in Lead and Oak frame.
Part 2: Stripped bare 16mm acetate film on two reels in acrylic case.
Part 1: 265cm x 265cm x 10cm
Part 2: 102cm x 44cm x 17cm
2014
Each month I have been sending the collectors I work with a selection of work from artists who I think are interesting, who are acclaimed by their contemporaries and who I believe are good long term investments.
There is such an enormous volume of mediocre and derivative art pushed at fairs and available from commercial galleries - art which is just as expensive as genuinely good art but which relies for its interest on a gimmick, or just the display of a little skill - that anybody who does not spend a lot of their time looking at art can be easily confused as to what will really reward years of looking and be a solid, and perhaps spectacular, investment. For those with the time to look then underneath the world of high street mediocrity and decoration lies a world of intelligent and progressive art which is affordable and delivers as an investment and as an enlightening cultural artefact.
Last month the selection of artists I recommended comprised mainly of relatively established artists whose prices have not yet sky-rocketed. This month I have focused on lower priced and less established artists - offering greater risk, but greater potential return. Most importantly all the artists suggested are making beautiful, intelligent, peer reviewed and engaging work.
Please contact me if you would like to discuss suggestions.
