COLIN HUNT
foreword
Untitled (Fog) 2022
Egg tempera on panel
48 x 36 in.
In Colin Hunt’s new paintings, myriad tiny rocks, grains of sand, and strands of rockweed form a coastal beach, while lush forests pierce a crystalline sky. Elsewhere, palpable mists set a mysterious tone. The outlines of shapes seem to appear—and disappear—into the landscape. We want to know: where is this? Or, more importantly, what is this? The answer is not so easily found.
Amid all their painted specificity, these works depict anywhere and everywhere. Likewise, their “subjects” are someone, or anyone, something, or anything. While deftly combining the traditions of portraiture and American landscape painting, Hunt veers from the conventions of each. Neither person nor place, these new paintings in egg tempera and in watercolor sit, as the artist states, “at the crossroads of memory, loss and ecology.”
The Land is a Body, the artist’s second solo exhibition at Hirschl & Adler, expands upon previous themes of passage and memory, with the recognition that environments— the land itself—also hold memories and experience loss. In these new works, not only do the paintings refract figures and their relationship to place but suggest how the landscape might do that as well, encompassing not only human time, but earthly time. For Hunt, painting the intricate details found in the natural world allows him to explore light, and its corollary, time, while embracing that which is transient and mortal.
Hunt cites his deep admiration of early Renaissance paintings of the Sienese School, in which the natural and spiritual worlds collide, as inspiration for choosing to paint in egg tempera. Save for a few notable artists including Thomas Hart Benton, Andrew Wyeth, and George Tooker, rarely have American artists from the 20th century to the present embraced this challenging and unforgiving medium. The slow and methodical process of mixing fresh pigments each day and applying countless strokes of layered, translucent glazes are techniques perfected during the Renaissance by artists seeking to elevate artistic expression to a higher plane of meaning. The same methods align perfectly with Hunt’s inclination toward drawing and the metaphysical ideas in his work.
Because they are not direct portraits of person or place the subjects (rocks, trees, figures) are held up as vessels of memory and love, representing past, present, and future. As such they are genuine expressions of healing and solace; reminders of the indelible connection between humans and nature; and hopeful evidence that despite the ubiquitous reality of loss, the impression life leaves behind endures.
SHELLEY FARMER Director, Hirschl & Adler ModernArtist Statement
Untitled (Gray Rocks)
2023
Egg tempera on panel
48 x 36 in.
The Land is a Body builds upon the notion of passage and memory, from my previous exhibition at Hirschl & Adler, to embody regeneration through loss. This new body of work expands on my earlier portraits. They are about how we pass through spaces and time and change them. What we leave behind in the wake of this journey is still the center of my artistic project.
In some works, figures are no longer tethered to the land, but in motion: floating mirrors of the spaces surrounding their absence. In others, what’s missing are the rocks of the land itself: the glacial erratics—boulders left by receding glaciers thousands of years ago.
Glacial erratics are chunks of rock that have been carried and deposited by glaciers as they moved and shaped the land. Because of this, they are of a different type than the landforms surrounding them. They tell the story of how the glacier moved through the landscape. So quite literally, they are the residue of what is gone within the formation of the land itself.
I have deliberately taken all the works from almost the exact same location: Isle au Haut, Maine. Many of the paintings not only reflect alternate vantages of the same people or objects from painting to painting, but some of the “subjects” in one painting may be the boulders, rocks, or surroundings in the background of another. It’s the same with the figures, they repeat and multiply between the paintings.
A place, really any place, is the literal accumulation of everything that has ever been, lived, or died in that location. As our understanding of the natural world evolves, more and more we are starting to realize that death is the engine within the landscape that leads to renewed growth. Each is in concert with the process of decay and regeneration; we are not co-existing with nature but are a part of the infinite reciprocal web that is nature.
I imagine this as future forward—that the very distant past, the remembered past, the present and the future are contained all at once in our experience of the world. As we carry the contents of our hearts through time, the universe becomes the reflection of the contents of our heart. For me, they are one and the same.
COLIN HUNT
Untitled (Pine)
2023
Egg tempera on panel 32 x 32 in.
Untitled (Pebble Beach)
2024
Watercolor on paper 22 1⁄ 2 x 22 1⁄ 2 in.
Untitled (Cloud)
2023
Egg tempera on panel
32 x 32 in.
Many-Worlds Interpretation (E.P.K.B.H.)
2022
Egg tempera on panel
24 x 24 in.
Untitled (Midday)
2024
Watercolor on paper 30 x 30 in.
Untitled (Dead Low) 2023
Egg tempera on panel 32 x 32 in.
colin hunt
1973 New York, NY
education
1998 Master of Fine Arts, Columbia University, School of the Arts, New York, NY
1995 Bachelor of Fine Arts, The Cooper Union, New York, NY
solo , two & three person exhibitions
2021 So Much Remains to Be , Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York, NY
2019 Keeping Things Whole , Galveston Artist Residency, Galveston, TX
In The Garden of Forking Path s, Mother Gallery, Beacon, NY
2018 Liminal , Elizabeth Houston Gallery, New York, NY
2017 Through the Roof , Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA
2014 Louise Lawler and Colin Hunt: Two Site-Specific Installations Curated by Robert Longo , Artisanal House, New York, NY
2008 Journey’s End , desChamps Gallery, Lambertville, NJ
2007 From River to Sea , Canal Frame-Crafts Gallery, Washington Crossing, PA
1998 Colin Hunt , Roger Smith Gallery, New York, NY
selected group exhibitions
2023 The Familiar Unknown , Bernay Fine Art, Great Barrington, MA
2022 A Likeness , Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York, NY
2021 In Safe Harbor, One Mile Gallery, Kingston, NY
2020 Every Lie to Truth , Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York, NY
2018 April is the Cruellest Month , Mother Gallery, Beacon, NY
Ecophilia , Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA
Precurse , Park Place Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2017 Squared x2 , Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA
Common Ground , Anna Nova Gallery, St. Petersburg, Russia
The Twenty by Sixteen Biennial , Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY
2016 Chronic Blooms , Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA
Island Time: Galveston Artist Residency, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX
Many-Worlds Interp retat ion (H.C.H.L.V.b) 2021
Watercolor on paper
22 x 11 in.
Untitled (Moss) 2024
Watercolor on paper
24 x 18 in.
Artists/Assistants. Robert Longo Studio (1983–2016), Triumph Gallery, Moscow, Russia
(Squared)2 , Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA
2015 Prime Matter, Teckningsmuseet, Laholm, Sweden
The Big Show , Silas Marder Gallery, Bridgehampton, NY
The Valentine’s Day Cardiovascular, Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA
2014 Prime Matter, Senaspace Gallery, New York, NY
Vox X , Vox Populi, Philadelphia, PA
2012 Speakers , 111 Front St. Galleries, Brooklyn, NY
From Life , Radiator Gallery, Queens, NY
Mapping Galveston , Galveston Arts Residency, Galveston, TX
Grand Opening , Galveston Arts Residency, Galveston, TX
2011 ICI NYSE Dinner Group Show , Artisanal House, New York, NY
Double Vision , Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA
Vernalis , North Henry Annex, Brooklyn, NY
2010 Im-promp-tu , Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA
Annual Juried Exhibition , Phillips Mill, New Hope, PA
2009 Body Language , Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA
Room Tones , St. Cecilia Convent, Brooklyn, NY
Annual Juried Exhibition , Phillips Mill, New Hope, PA
2008 Monsters , Rental, New York, NY
Annual Juried Exhibition , Phillips Mill, New Hope, PA
2007
2006
2004
Annual Juried Exhibition , Phillips Mill, New Hope, PA
Annual Juried Exhibition , Phillips Mill, New Hope, PA
Open House , Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY
Scope Art Fair, Gansevoort Hotel, New York, NY
2003 Dreamy, ZieherSmith, New York, NY
2002 177th Annual: An Invitational Exhibition , National Academy of Design, New York, NY
2001 Yellow Brick Road , White Columns, New York, NY
2000 @ , PPOW, New York, NY
From Scratch , Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, NY
1999 The Searchers , Artist Space, New York, NY
The Constructed Landscape , Lawrence Rubin Greenberg Van Doren, New York, NY
awards and residencies
2011 First Resident of the Galveston Arts Residency, Galveston, TX
2009 The Ellen Pearson Sutton Award, Annual Juried Exhibition , Phillips Mill, New Hope, PA
2007 Landscape Oil Painting Award, Annual Juried Exhibition , Phillips Mill, New Hope, PA
2006 Hughes Award, Annual Juried Exhibition , Phillips Mill, New Hope, PA
2002 Richard M Recchia Memorial Prize, 177th Annual: An Invitation Exhibition , National Academy of Design, New York, NY
selected bibliography
Architectural Digest , January 2023
“Show Preview: Colin Hunt, Remains,” American Art Collector, March 2021
New American Paintings , No. 146, February / March 2020, Juried by Jerry Saltz
Harper’s , April 2018
New American Paintings , No. 128 Northeast Issue, 2017
The Brooklyn Review 26, 2009
“Reinventions,” Columbia Journal of Literature and Art 31, 1999 Many-Worlds Interpretation
Untitled (Red Rocks) 2021
Egg tempera on panel 42 x 42 in.
design
Elizabeth Finger Design
photography
All photographs by Eric W. Baumgartner, except: Colin Hunt, cover, frontis, pp. 7, 12, 15
cover
Untitled (Late Afternoon) 2024
Egg tempera on panel 48 x 48 in.
frontis
Untitled (Island) 2024
Egg tempera on panel 33 x 44 in.
© 2024 Hirschl & Adler Modern
ISBN 978-1 -937941-25-3