Bethan Huws
26 Nov 2010 - 06 Feb 2011
Bethan Huws
Cactus, 2008
Watercolour on paper
45 x 36,5 cm
Courtesy of the artist Foto / Photo: Studio B. Huws © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2010
Cactus, 2008
Watercolour on paper
45 x 36,5 cm
Courtesy of the artist Foto / Photo: Studio B. Huws © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2010
BETHAN HUWS
Drawings
26.11.2010 – 06.02.2011
For Bethan Huws the act of drawing is always partly based on a personal recollection. Perhaps of a certain place, such as her parental home, or of things like a shell she once found, or of animals, like grazing sheep. But she strips down and simplifies these memory images so that, while still always remaining bound to her personal experience, they also assume a more general character. Often their forms are in fact so reduced they border on abstraction. And then the form takes on a life of its own, where a cactus perhaps will arise from a few colourful pencil strokes. Then on turning the picture through 90 degrees the same drawing recalls a crocodile. Huws keeps up this playful approach and with that combines her memories with ours, as a matter of course. The artist was born in 1961 in Wales and studied from 1986 to 1988 at the Royal College of Art in London. Many of her works tell of her searching reflections on Marcel Duchamp’s work, as well as of her subjective explorations into her own surroundings and background and the translation of these into a form that is pared down to the essentials. Time and again her laconic titles point to the relationship between image and model. Bethan Huws’ drawings are restricted to just a few lines and concentrated on one small section of the paper, so that the white surrounding space resonates with the image.
Dr. Julia Friedrich
Drawings
26.11.2010 – 06.02.2011
For Bethan Huws the act of drawing is always partly based on a personal recollection. Perhaps of a certain place, such as her parental home, or of things like a shell she once found, or of animals, like grazing sheep. But she strips down and simplifies these memory images so that, while still always remaining bound to her personal experience, they also assume a more general character. Often their forms are in fact so reduced they border on abstraction. And then the form takes on a life of its own, where a cactus perhaps will arise from a few colourful pencil strokes. Then on turning the picture through 90 degrees the same drawing recalls a crocodile. Huws keeps up this playful approach and with that combines her memories with ours, as a matter of course. The artist was born in 1961 in Wales and studied from 1986 to 1988 at the Royal College of Art in London. Many of her works tell of her searching reflections on Marcel Duchamp’s work, as well as of her subjective explorations into her own surroundings and background and the translation of these into a form that is pared down to the essentials. Time and again her laconic titles point to the relationship between image and model. Bethan Huws’ drawings are restricted to just a few lines and concentrated on one small section of the paper, so that the white surrounding space resonates with the image.
Dr. Julia Friedrich