ST. LOUIS, MO.- British artist Hurvin Anderson is best known for evocative paintings of lush landscapes and urban barbershops that explore themes of memory, place, and the indelible connection between the two.
The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis presents the most comprehensive survey of Anderson’s work to date, on view September 11 through December 27, 2015. This exhibition examines the artist’s practice in depth, presenting new and recent paintings alongside previously unseen sculpture and photography.
Anderson was born in Birmingham, United Kingdom, to Jamaican parents, and his source material often stems from formative experiences in Birmingham’s Afro-Caribbean community as well as in Trinidad, where he was an artist-in-residence. In Trinidad he became intimately familiar with Caribbean topography and aesthetic motifs such as decorative fences and metal grilles. Anderson’s paintings are invested with charged social histories and shifting notions of cultural identity, and his recent work continues this trajectory through a focus on the liminal; each work compresses a memory and flattens it into the two-dimensional picture plane, resulting in a composition that appears slightly distant and longing, even melancholy. Anderson applies paint with a seemingly rapid ease and fluidity, as if eagerly capturing the scene before it drifts away. As a result, the paintings evoke the slippery act of remembrance, charting measures of emotional and geographic distance.
Anderson’s sculptures, many on view for the first time, explore the role of everyday objects in the construction of personal identity. Juici and Mother’s Chicken (both 2006), for example, refer to two established restaurant chains in Jamaica serving “authentic patties”—a mainstay of traditional Caribbean cuisine and an important symbol of the artist’s youth. Anderson recreates the food containers distributed by these restaurants, challenging both the process of mass production and the construction of racial stereotypes.
Never-before-seen diaristic photographs, large format and sometimes hand-incised, document Anderson’s experiences in Trinidad. The point of departure for his paintings, these photographs offer the viewer an opportunity to shuttle between seemingly objective documentary photography and the subjective nature of painting. They also offer insight into the artist’s process. Some photographs, such as CNC (2008), feature decorative architectural patterns cut into the surface, highlighting feelings of emptiness or disenfranchisement.
Together, Anderson’s paintings, sculptures, and photographs suggest the many physical and emotional distinctions between a space and its beholder. No matter how familiar the subject of these works may become, the viewer must contend with obstacles in order to contemplate the lush scenes, seeking access to a complex reality that is ultimately the domain of the artist alone.
Hurvin Anderson (b. 1965, Birmingham, United Kingdom) lives and works in London. Recent solo exhibitions include Art Now: Hurvin Anderson, Tate Modern, London (2009), which traveled to the Studio Museum, Harlem, New York (2009). Recent exhibitions include New Works, Thomas Dane Gallery, London (2013); Reporting Back, IKON Gallery, Birmingham (2013); and Subtitles, Michael Werner Gallery, New York (2011). Anderson has been included in group exhibitions at notable institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2013) and the Leicester Museum and Art Gallery in England (2000).
