Gary Hume at Matthew Marks - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Art in America, Oct, 1997 by David Bourdon

Savvy and slick, luscious and droll, Gary Hume's recent paintings bolster his position as one of London's most compelling younger artists. He exhibited 11 minimally figurative pictures, all dating from the last two years, rendered in super-glossy enamel on aluminum panels, most of which are between 5 and 7 feet in height. The schematic formats and exaggerated hues evoke British and American Pop of the early '60s, although those styles probably seem remote to an artist born in 1962.

Hume employs an exhilarating array of offbeat hues and indulges in clever textural effects, which enhance the irresistible appeal of his work. From afar, the compositions may appear facile and posterlike, but, up close, the brushwork reveals itself to be fluidly applied and surprisingly painterly. When he depicts pretty human faces and stylishly omits mundane details, the results suggest Warholian portraits of unblemished, almost featureless glamour pusses. The young woman in Cerith (1997) is little more than a blank silver face and close-cropped blue hair, flattened against a bright yellow ground. Her pale yellow eyes are fringed by yellow-and-pink squiggles that signify lashes. A round pink from hovers near one ear lobe; is it an errant ear clip or an oversize beauty mark? Angle (1997) is a Mick Jagger-like apparition with wild yellow hair, a gray-blue face and a long exquisitely shaped neck. The eyes delineated in white, are superimposed on contrasting splotches of yellow-green and mustard.

The scarcely visible face in Whistler (1996), inhabiting an inky black setting, can be deduced from the presence of olive-green eyes and hands, with two fingers pushing green lips into a circle. A few tropical-looking leaves dangle overhead and a few pale-yellow letters are aligned along the bottom edge, as if evoking the sound of whistling in the dark.

Hume's excursions into outdoorsy subjects are similarly non-naturalistics. In the Park (1997) presents a triad of colorful elongated trees that suggest wavy ladyfingers (in tan, avocado and strawberry pink) looming against a bright blue sky. High above is a white disk with a silver of orange crescent.

Hume's long, fluid brush stokes often resemble finger painting, as do the two sets of long, gently curved stripes in subtly muted colors that flank the "eye" of a large tail feather in Peacock (1996), a nearly monochromatic black painting. In Doves (1997), five birds with pale peppermint bodies, white eyes and silver-dotted shoulders, strut in profile off the lower right corner. The flock is deployed against a purplish-black field that fades fuzzily into a chartreuse border. In the center of this dark Rothkoesque "cloud," viewers can make out a larger bird with spread wings, drawn with textured strokes. It is almost invisible, except from close up and in raking light, because it is rendered in the same hue as the rest of the field.

In the back gallery, Hume displayed four underexposed Cibachromes of individual snowmen, three of which were stained in shades of green, pink or charcoal gray. Their poor photographic quality made for a peculiar and somewhat unsettling coda to an otherwise engaging exhibition.