The work of Richard Artschwager and Gary Hume circles the same fundamental problem: what an object, or an image, becomes when its surface is the subject.

The exhibition with works by Richard Artschwager and Gary Hume marks the first time their work has been brought into dialogue. For this show—the first at the New York gallery for each artist—Hume selected his works in direct response to Artschwager’s.

Artschwager’s punctuation marks and Hume’s silhouettes share an interest in the smallest units of legibility: Exclamation Point (1988), made of bristles on a wooden core, is stripped of its grammatical function and turned into an object that is at once emphatic and purposeless, prompting the viewer to look again at something they thought they already understood. Hume’s Yellow Nude 8 (2015) operates similarly—a shiny yellow surface with a black silhouette, it represents not the body itself but the void between hip and arm, the shape of an absence.

“It was Formica which touched it off. . . . It was a picture of wood. If you take that and make something out of it, then you have an object.” –Richard Artschwager

Formica proved an important material for Artschwager in his transition from craftsman to fine artist in the late 1950s and 1960s, and his fascination with the material continued throughout his career. Artschwager set out to make “paintings for the touch” and “sculptures for the eye,” constructing his works from commercial materials such as Formica and Celotex, and casting familiar domestic objects—chairs, tables, doors—at distorted scales and unexpected configurations that deliberately blur the boundary between painting and sculpture.

Formica proved an important material for Artschwager in his transition from craftsman to fine artist in the late 1950s and 1960s, and his fascination with the material continued throughout his career. Artschwager set out to make “paintings for the touch” and “sculptures for the eye,” constructing his works from commercial materials such as Formica and Celotex, and casting familiar domestic objects—chairs, tables, doors—at distorted scales and unexpected configurations that deliberately blur the boundary between painting and sculpture.

“I wanted to make paintings that were as physical as objects.” –Gary Hume

Hume—one of the most important and independent voices among the Young British Artists—is best known for his figurative and abstract paintings on aluminium panels, made with high-gloss household enamel paint, often featuring natural motifs. Exemplary of Hume’s approach are the Doors series, such as The Argument (diptych) (2004) and The Couple (diptych) (2004), which anthropomorphize door forms as a couple in conflict and a pair of lovers, respectively.

Exclamation Point (2)) (2004) demonstrates his use of bold color fields and simplified form. Executed in high-gloss enamel on aluminium, it emphasizes surface and hue over representational detail. The work distills image into gesture, highlighting the tension between pictorial presence and objecthood central to Hume’s practice.

Exclamation Point (2)) (2004) demonstrates his use of bold color fields and simplified form. Executed in high-gloss enamel on aluminium, it emphasizes surface and hue over representational detail. The work distills image into gesture, highlighting the tension between pictorial presence and objecthood central to Hume’s practice.

Hume’s Three Yellow Horizons and a Green Wood (2013) shifts toward a more distilled, landscape-based vocabulary and particularly exemplifies his engagement with motifs drawn from nature, where bands of color evoke horizon lines and reduce the natural world to a luminous, near-abstract composition.