SEATTLE, WA.- The Frye Art Museum will present Hugh Hayden: American Vernacular, the artist’s first West Coast solo museum presentation. Hayden is a pathbreaking contemporary sculptor whose visceral artworks reveal the complex markers of identity and aspiration within American culture. His darkly humorous objects probe the ways in which we find belonging and a sense of self through education, sports, fashion, food, and beyond. This major survey features intricately carved wood sculptures and multimedia installations that encompass the breadth of Hayden’s ambitious artistic output from the past decade, as well as several new works that will debut in this exhibition.
Hayden is an innovative and diverse maker, pursuing meticulous craft-based methods such as wood carving, weaving, and casting in combination with ready-made forms, materials, and twenty-first century fabrication modes. His keen awareness of lived space and fascination with the design of American life draw from his training as an architect at Cornell University. Given Hayden’s background and focus on furniture and architecture, this exhibition centers on the word “vernacular.” In contrast to monumental or civic buildings, vernacular designs are part of daily, often domestic, lived environments. Drawing from the quotidian spaces of American life, Hayden’s artworks reveal how these designs shape one’s identity and ability to thrive. Interested in his own origins and the shared experiences of all Americans, he uses familiar forms to explore this country’s past, present, and future.
Hayden’s sculptures evoke the tensions, humor, and even sharp pain of daily existence, bridging the everyday and the surreal. The exhibition centers on core themes, including early childhood, domestic architecture, faith, athletics, and culinary traditions. Altogether his works reveal the effort and cost of living in the United States—a reminder that what seems comfortable to some is inhospitable or unattainable for others.
The exhibition is accompanied by the artist’s first monograph, Hugh Hayden: American Vernacular, published in 2023 by MIT Press and edited by Sarah Montross, featuring critical essays by Dr. Mark Anthony Neal, Carmen Maria Machado, and an interview between the artist and curator Horace Ballard, PhD.
Hugh Hayden was born in 1981 in Dallas and lives and works in New York. He holds an MFA from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University. His work is part of numerous public collections, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, Miami; deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA; Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ; Smart Museum, Chicago; and the Whitney Museum of Art, New York.
Hugh Hayden: American Vernacular is organized by the Frye Art Museum and guest curated by Sarah Montross, Museum Director and Chief Curator, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, The Trustees. The exhibition is presented in partnership with the deCordova. A version of this exhibition was on view at the Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, February 10–May 12, 2024.
