H UG O W I L S O N
Parafin, London
Hugo Wilson —
4 Contents
6 – 10
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Introduction Not A Single Approach — Alison Bracker Plates
11 13 – 15 17 19 – 21 23 – 27 29 – 31 33 – 35 37 39 – 41 42 43 45 46 47 49 50 51 53 54 55 56 57 59 60 – 61 63 65 67
— Giordano Hunt 1 Hunt 2 Hunt 3 Hunt 4 Hunt 5 Hunt 6 Hunt 7 — Sur La Table — Mithraim 1 Mithraim 2 — Labour 1 Labour 2 Labour 3 Labour 4 Labour 5 Labour 6 Labour 7 Labour 8 Labour 9 Labour 10 Labour 11 Labour 12 — Untitled Untitled Untitled — Untitled
68 – 69
List of Works
70 – 71
Biography
In 2009 Hugo Wilson made a series of works entitled Hyperventilation. Negative casts in resin of the spaces within the heart were produced by ‘corrosion casting’. Depicting the chambers and ventricles of the heart in a state of agitation brought about by feelings of fear or love, the sculptures were an attempt to capture and Introduction — Ben Tufnell
present the ‘actual physical reality of this fleeting and almost indescribable moment that everyone experiences’. Since then Wilson has made taxonomical drawings and etchings of weird animal hybrids such as the beefalo (the offspring of American Buffalo and domestic cattle) and zedonk (horse and zebra), essayed paintings of poisonous plants made using their antidotes, and figurative explorations of Rorschach tests. Now Wilson has made a series of Post-Modern Old-Masterish paintings and sculptures in oil paint and terracotta, depicting abstracted hunt scenes and composite renderings of the Labours of Hercules. Separated by five years, these very diverse works were actually born of a consistent project, a desire to understand the complex ways in which knowledge is represented and codified and meaning created. In sculpting the chambers of the heart or painting a zebra ravaged by a leopard (or more accurately, painting fragments of historical paintings of zebras ravaged by leopards), Wilson is exploring and attempting to understand the structures—biological, cultural, historical and philosophical that underlay human life. And from that position, to address the ways in which culture takes the raw stuff of existence and uses it to generate meaning. Where does meaning lie? How does it persist? Wilson’s work enacts an investigative process in which the outcome is by no means certain. The work forms a series of open-ended questions and correspondingly provisional answers. He is fascinated by the processes by which the structures of power—perhaps religious or political—are established and reinforced. Two millennia after its creation a Roman Mithraic frieze is ‘meaningless’ on several different levels. The system of belief that engendered the image is lost to us, but the image is too, thanks to the slow erosion of time. Nonetheless, meaning still resides there, somewhere. Something similar is happening to a church—on consecrated ground and thereby ‘untouchable’—marooned within a huge commercial development. Or indeed, to a painting of a rhinoceros hunt, something utterly unthinkable in this day and age. Wilson’s work reminds us that these historical structures—paintings, sculptures, buildings, images—remain present, yet their meanings shift and change as their power waxes and wanes but
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never disappears completely.
Above: Hugo Wilson, Hyperventilation, 2009 Polyurethane resin corrosion cast, glass and wire 60 × 60 × 60 cm — Right: Hugo Wilson, Beefalo, 2011 Charcoal and pencil on paper 170 × 220 cm
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Giordano 2014 — Oil on prepared panel 103 × 130 cm
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Hunt 1 2014 — Oil on prepared panel 142 × 180 cm
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Hunt 4 2014 — Oil on canvas 200 × 215 cm
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Mithraim 1 2014 — Charcoal on paper, waxed steel frame 86 × 113.5 cm
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Mithraim 2 2014 — Charcoal on paper, waxed steel frame 86 × 113.5 cm
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Labour 1 2014 — Terracotta and waxed steel 158 × 42 × 37 cm approx.
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Labour 2 2014 — Terracotta and waxed steel 158 × 42 × 37 cm approx.
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Labour 3 2014 — Terracotta and waxed steel 158 × 42 × 37 cm approx.
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Untitled 2014 — Two photographs on Dibond, waxed steel frames 124 × 148 cm each
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Published on the occasion of the exhibition Hugo Wilson Parafin, London 11 February – 21 March 2015
Parafin 18 Woodstock Street London W1C 2AL +44 (0)20 7495 1969 www.parafin.co.uk
Design: Matt Watkins Print: Lecturis, Eindhoven Photography: Peter Mallet All works © Hugo Wilson 2015 Texts © the authors 2015 Publication © Parafin, London 2015
Edition of 700 Published by Parafin, London and Lecturis, Eindhoven www.lecturis.nl International distribution: Idea Books www.ideabooks.nl
ISBN: 978-94-6226-136-5