Alex Hubbard
02 Mar - 05 Apr 2012
© Alex Hubbard
Untitled (Dominican Painting)
2012Acrylic and resin on canvas
198.12 x 218.44 x 4.13 cm, 78 x 86 x 1 5/8 in
Untitled (Dominican Painting)
2012Acrylic and resin on canvas
198.12 x 218.44 x 4.13 cm, 78 x 86 x 1 5/8 in
ALEX HUBBARD
Eat Your Friends
2 March - 5 April, 2012
Simon Lee Gallery is proud to present EAT YOUR FRIENDS, an exhibition of new videos and paintings by American artist Alex Hubbard, his first solo exhibition at the gallery.
Hubbard values the materiality and tactility of every stage of the creation of his paintings and videos, rather than deriving satisfaction from their finished resolution. In a constantly shifting flat plane, building and art materials, urban detritus, and domestic items make their way into Alex Hubbard’s two new videos, EAT YOUR FRIENDS and BOTTOM OF THE TOP, and now on to his paintings too.
Avoiding a single point of focus, he constructs his videos in layers, engulfing the viewer with bold colours, performative gestures and evolving, all-over compositions in which movement is multi-directional and time appears to be non-linear. Spilling, spraying, constructing, throwing, splashing and building over a flat surface, the constantly shifting camera view from upright to horizontal stymies any attempt at a rational apprehension of the objects and processes featured. Instead each frame becomes a non-hierarchical pictorial arrangement, in which he himself is often present, either as a disembodied arm or hand, or in full, revealing the apparent trickery of the film as no trick at all. The fast-paced and shifting soundtracks add an uplifting and provocative dimension to his audacious visual narratives that challenge notions of duration and question the difference between looking and watching.
The four paintings in this exhibition are made with fibreglass, glassy pools of resin and oil which runs over myriad plastic objects and fixes them to their surface. As with his two videos, the compositions are non-hierarchical and make explicit their construction. Hubbard’s videos and paintings are constructed along parallel lines, both exploring the construction, composition, mass, colour and depth of images in unexpected ways.
Alex Hubbard was born in 1975 in Toledo, Oregon, and lives in New York. He received his BFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art and participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. One-person exhibitions of his work have been presented at venues such as Gaga Contemporary, Mexico City; Standard (Oslo), Oslo; and the Kitchen, Maccarone Gallery, and Team Gallery in New York. A two-person exhibition with Oscar Tuazon was presented at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis in 2008. Hubbard’s work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including Compulsive Jalouse, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2006); Nothingness and Being, Jumex Collection, Mexico City (2009); The Reach of Realism, Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami (2009); Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2010); Greater New York, MoMA PS1, Long Island City, New York (2010); Knight's Move, SculptureCenter, Long Island City, New York (2010), and Le Printemps de Septembre, Festival of Contemporary Arts, Toulouse (2011).
Eat Your Friends
2 March - 5 April, 2012
Simon Lee Gallery is proud to present EAT YOUR FRIENDS, an exhibition of new videos and paintings by American artist Alex Hubbard, his first solo exhibition at the gallery.
Hubbard values the materiality and tactility of every stage of the creation of his paintings and videos, rather than deriving satisfaction from their finished resolution. In a constantly shifting flat plane, building and art materials, urban detritus, and domestic items make their way into Alex Hubbard’s two new videos, EAT YOUR FRIENDS and BOTTOM OF THE TOP, and now on to his paintings too.
Avoiding a single point of focus, he constructs his videos in layers, engulfing the viewer with bold colours, performative gestures and evolving, all-over compositions in which movement is multi-directional and time appears to be non-linear. Spilling, spraying, constructing, throwing, splashing and building over a flat surface, the constantly shifting camera view from upright to horizontal stymies any attempt at a rational apprehension of the objects and processes featured. Instead each frame becomes a non-hierarchical pictorial arrangement, in which he himself is often present, either as a disembodied arm or hand, or in full, revealing the apparent trickery of the film as no trick at all. The fast-paced and shifting soundtracks add an uplifting and provocative dimension to his audacious visual narratives that challenge notions of duration and question the difference between looking and watching.
The four paintings in this exhibition are made with fibreglass, glassy pools of resin and oil which runs over myriad plastic objects and fixes them to their surface. As with his two videos, the compositions are non-hierarchical and make explicit their construction. Hubbard’s videos and paintings are constructed along parallel lines, both exploring the construction, composition, mass, colour and depth of images in unexpected ways.
Alex Hubbard was born in 1975 in Toledo, Oregon, and lives in New York. He received his BFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art and participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. One-person exhibitions of his work have been presented at venues such as Gaga Contemporary, Mexico City; Standard (Oslo), Oslo; and the Kitchen, Maccarone Gallery, and Team Gallery in New York. A two-person exhibition with Oscar Tuazon was presented at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis in 2008. Hubbard’s work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including Compulsive Jalouse, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2006); Nothingness and Being, Jumex Collection, Mexico City (2009); The Reach of Realism, Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami (2009); Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2010); Greater New York, MoMA PS1, Long Island City, New York (2010); Knight's Move, SculptureCenter, Long Island City, New York (2010), and Le Printemps de Septembre, Festival of Contemporary Arts, Toulouse (2011).