Xavier Hufkens Gallery is pleased to present Constructions, an exhibition of new sculptures and paintings by Thomas Houseago. This is the artist's fifth exhibition with the gallery.
Known for figurative sculpture and immersive architectural environments, Thomas Houseago has established a sculptural and painting practice using a wide range of mediums, including traditional materials such as plywood, plaster, hemp, graphite, iron rebar, charcoal, as well as, bronze and aluminium. Houseago's life-sized and monumental sculptures have appeased his natural tendency to work in a scale that requires a physical struggle, as well as performative and exhaustive efforts. His sculptures and paintings are infused with a sense of urgency, dynamism and vulnerability.
Artists such as Giacometti, Rodin, Brancusi and Calder have long fascinated Houseago with their ability to project intentions of monumentality onto their sculptural models or maquettes. With this new series of assemblage sculptures, originally fabricated in plywood, Houseago takes a new approach that lies in direct opposition to the conventional sculptural process of scaling up models for the realization of monumental form, and plays with notions of imagined and constructed form. The sculptures included in Constructions concentrate on the artist's obsessions: the walking figure, the head and face, the reclining figure, the owl. 'I wanted to focus on them from a very meditative and performative stance,' Houseago explains. Indeed, the basis for these works are meditative drawings and their movement from drawing to wood cuts, from wood to metal they trace their making and establish solid form through actions and transitions.
The paintings in the exhibition, a series of fragmented faces in charcoal, graphite, and coloured pencil further explore Houseago's fracturing process. 'My paintings often come from the drawings, but what goes on in the paintings will then feed the sculptures.' In this cyclical and interlinked process Houseago takes us through his personal relationship with forms within space, and the traditions of building structures, memories, and experiences.
Thomas Houseago (b. 1972, Leeds, UK) lives and works in Los Angeles. In 2019, a retrospective of his work will open at the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Solo exhibitions include Lovers, Le Consortium, Vosne-Romanée, France (2015-2016), Masks (Pentagon), Rockefeller Plaza, New York (2015); Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague, The Netherlands (2014) and Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York (2013).
Press release courtesy Xavier Hufkens.
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