Frank Bowling has said, 'The subject of my art is paint—the way that colour washes, spreads, bleeds, and the way that paint-colour emits light.' His exhibition Landscape (26 May–5 August 2023) at Hauser & Wirth's West Hollywood space shows just this.
Some canvases hold structure within their iridescent, horizontal swathes of paint. Found objects are worked into the surfaces of many—beware of the scorpions in Biter (2021).
The fate of others lies entirely in the interaction between the paint and canvas. The translucent, marbled drips in Ashton'smix (2014) are particularly illustrative of Bowling's brush and how light falls upon it.
May has been a busy month for the 89-year-old, British-Guyanese artist. Commemorating the 70th anniversary of his arrival in London from British Guiana (now Guyana) shortly before Queen Elizabeth II's 1953 coronation, his first digital artwork Arrival (2023) went on view on the billboard in London's Piccadilly Circus in anticipation of King Charles III's coronation.
The display appears at 20:23 local time nightly for the rest of June 2023—just a short walk away from the Royal Academy of Arts, where Bowling studied painting and was elected an Academician in 2005.
In the U.S., the artist's major survey Frank Bowling: The New York Years 1966–1975 (20 May–10 September 2023) is currently on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
