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Exhibitions — 2020
Hugo Wilson
Havoc
3 December 2020 – 6 February 2021
Hugo Wilson:
Havoc
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Hugo Wilson:
Havoc
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Hugo Wilson:
Havoc
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Hugo Wilson:
Havoc
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Hugo Wilson:
Havoc
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Hugo Wilson:
Havoc
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Hugo Wilson:
Havoc
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Hugo Wilson:
Havoc
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Hugo Wilson:
Havoc
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Hugo Wilson:
Havoc
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Hugo Wilson:
Havoc
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Hugo Wilson:
Havoc
Installation view
Photo: Peter Mallet
Parafin is delighted to announce its third solo exhibition with Hugo Wilson, his first in London since 2016. The exhibition will showcase new large-scale charcoal drawings, bronzes and terracotta sculptures which represent a significant development in Wilson’s practice. Also included is his largest work to date, Tapestry, a five panel charcoal drawing almost 8 metres across. The exhibition follows recent solo exhibitions in Berlin and Los Angeles and his participation in ‘Inspiration - Iconic Works’, at the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (2019) and Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki (2020).
Hugo Wilson’s work constitutes an investigation of images and their ability to represent ideological positions. Wilson combines motifs and forms from Western art history and from a variety of cultural sources – including Old Master paintings, Japanese woodcuts, Graeco-Roman and Baroque sculpture and contemporary sci-fi movies – in order to explore the ways in which systems of belief and ideology are encoded in culture over time. In his paintings and sculptures, Wilson deliberately manipulates and triggers our shared cultural references.
In his new work Wilson has developed techniques to push this process further than ever before. His new charcoal drawings are created by layering multiple images until everything hovers at the edge of recognition and legibility, allowing meaning to become something fluid rather than fixed. Nonetheless, recognisable motifs – a tree, a figure, a halo – emerge from the images and may allow us to anchor our perceptions. As Wilson says:
‘With the new set of drawings I’m interested in the idea of clashing images, chosen specifically to be hyper-referential but not specific, layering them over each other and scratching and pulling some kind of sense out of the chaos that ensues.’
To ‘scratch’ and ‘pull’ sense out of his dense images Wilson uses sanding machines, drills and rubbers to attack the surface of the paper, sometimes tearing it to reveal the aluminium panels beneath.
Wilson’s new bronze sculptures offer an almost diametrically opposed way of generating meaning. Instead of layering cultural references Wilson takes an organic found object and makes subtle interventions. Thus a tree branch, which is suggestive of a human torso or limb, has upon it small ‘growths’ of handmade foliage and a series of small trumpet horns. These interventions shift our reading of the object from the natural world to that of culture.
Wilson’s work responds to a fractured world in which unprecedented interconnectedness and free access to ‘news’ and endless historic imagery means that the ability to hold to what he calls ‘a single ideological position’ is almost impossible. In this sense, his new work is very much of its time, and becomes a way of finding elusive meaning within a maelstrom of information.
Selected Works
Hugo Wilson
Gurge
2020
Charcoal on paper mounted on aluminium panel
180 × 130 cm
Photo: Peter Mallet
PFN02385
Hugo Wilson
Effigy
2020
Charcoal on paper mounted on aluminium panel
180 × 130 cm
Photo: Peter Mallet
PFN02386
Hugo Wilson
Foehn
2020
Charcoal on paper mounted on aluminium panel
180 × 130 cm
Photo: Peter Mallet
PFN02387
Hugo Wilson
Barbari
2020
Charcoal on paper mounted on aluminium panel
180 × 130 cm
Photo: Peter Mallet
PFN02389
Hugo Wilson
Torrent
2020
Charcoal on paper mounted on aluminium panel
150 × 155 cm
Photo: Peter Mallet
PFN02411
Hugo Wilson
Dredge
2020
Charcoal on paper mounted on aluminium panel
185 × 150 cm
Photo: Peter Mallet
PFN02390
Hugo Wilson
Quarry
2020
Charcoal on paper mounted on aluminium panel
185 × 150 cm
Photo: Peter Mallet
PFN02391
Hugo Wilson
Pique
2020
Charcoal on paper mounted on aluminium panel
122 × 93 cm
Photo: Peter Mallet
PFN02392
Hugo Wilson
Tapestry
2020
Charcoal on paper mounted on aluminium panel
186 × 765 cm
Photo: Peter Mallet
PFN02273
Hugo Wilson
Recline
2020
Bronze
135 × 91 × 75 cm
Photo: Peter Mallet
PFN02415
Hugo Wilson
Instrument
2020
Sandblasted bronze
95 × 54 × 75 cm
Photo: Peter Mallet
PFN02416
Hugo Wilson
Bushido 1
2020
Glazed terracotta
49 × 47 × 71 cm
Photo: Peter Mallet
PFN02412
Hugo Wilson
Bushido 2
2020
Glazed terracotta
30 × 30 × 71 cm
Photo: Peter Mallet
PFN02413
Hugo Wilson
Bushido 3
2020
Glazed terracotta
46 × 31 × 61 cm
Photo: Peter Mallet
PFN02414
Biography
Hugo Wilson (born 1982) works across a range of media including painting, sculpture, ceramics and printmaking. Recent solo exhibitions include Galerie Judin, Berlin (2020, 2017), Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles (2018, 2012), Project B, Milan (2018, 2014) and Parafin London (2016, 2015). Important recent group exhibitions include ‘Inspiration - Iconic Works’, at the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (2019) and Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki (2020), ‘Beyond The Vessel’, Mesher, Istanbul 2019), ‘Dialogues: New Painting from London’, GASK, Kutna Hora, Czech Republic (2017), ‘Play Things’, New York Public Library (2013) and ‘Nightfall: New Tendencies in Figurative Painting’, MODEM Centre for Modern and Contemporary Art, Debrecen, Hungary (2012). Wilson’s work is in private and public collections internationally, including the New York Public Library, Kistefos Museum, Oslo, Deutsche Bank Collection and the Fondazione Memmo in Rome.
Further Reading
British artist Hugo Wilson on creating art from chaos
Maryam Eisler, Lux, September 2020
Links