Shara Hughes
— The Arts Club, London 26 September 2018 — 13 January 2019

This is an exhibition of new paintings by Brooklyn-based artist Shara Hughes. Hughes has recently participated in solo and group exhibitions at the Newport Art Museum, MASS MoCA, and at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. Notably, the 2017 Whitney Biennial featured a room of Hughes’ works, leading to international acclaim. 

Taking inspiration from early modernist painters such as Paul Gauguin, as well as contemporary references from David Hockney to travel postcards, Hughes subverts traditional representational landscapes, exploring psychological and spiritual realms. Working at the boundary between abstraction and representation, her approach blends memory, association and imagination to encourage new ways of exploring and presenting pictorial space. 

Describing the scenes created in her artworks as “imagined landscapes”, rendered through hyper-saturated, hallucinatory colours and boldly abstract shapes, the artist creates familiar yet completely unique vistas of the natural world. These imagined scenes are at first sight luscious paradises, however upon closer observation, are strange and unearthly spaces that favour the act of mark-making over truth to subject. 

This exhibition is curated by Amelie von Wedel and Pernilla Holmes from Wedel Art. Shara Hughes is represented by Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York and Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich.