Matthew Marks

Gary Hume

05 May - 23 Jun 2012

GARY HUME
Anxiety and the Horse
5 May - 23 June, 2012

Matthew Marks is pleased to announce Gary Hume: Anxiety and the Horse, an exhibition of new paintings at his gallery at 523 West 24th Street.

The exhibition consists of a series of seven brightly colored abstract paintings made in Hume’s signature enamel on aluminum panels. Painted last year in his studio in upstate New York, Hume recently spoke about these works:

“I painted them as history paintings, the killing of Osama Bin Laden. That moment, that one second, in American history. One is of Obama. Another is of Angela Merkel; another one of George Bush, but they don’t look like them at all; another one is of a ‘Z’ that looks like a bit of a barn door. One day I’m in the studio looking at them thinking, you’re absolutely kidding me. This just looks like a bunch of balloons going across a field. When I was painting them I was thinking of Rembrandt and Franz Hals, and the paintings have got nothing in them of Rembrandt or Hals. I’d finished with the painting of the horse. I’m looking at the seven paintings thinking I like them but they’re all rubbish, because I’ve set out to make this vast history painting suite and it just looks like anxiety, and a horse. Anxiety and the horse. That’s exactly what they are. That’s all right. Then the paintings could live.”

Gary Hume (b. 1962) lives and works in London and Accord, New York. This will be his ninth one-person exhibition at Matthew Marks Gallery since 1991. Hume represented Britain at the São Paulo Biennale in 1996 and at the Venice Biennale in 1999. The artist1s work has been the subject of one-person exhibitions at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, Kestnergesellschaft in Hannover, Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin and the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria. This year, Hume has one-person exhibitions at the Pinchuk Art Center in Kiev, Ukraine and at the Leeds Art Gallery in England, which travels to other venues in the UK. Tate Britain will present a major exhibition of the artist’s work in 2013.
 

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