In Review – Parafin & Wilson
Hugo Wilson
11 February – 21 March 2015
After a spontaneous invite to this show, knowing nothing about the artist or gallery, I left with a new contemporary artist to keep my eye on.
Hugo Wilson is a conceptual artist that works with his studio to create these huge beautiful paintings full of colour and movement. There is a definite influence of the old masters, especially Rubens and the other masters currently on show at the RA, but I was reliably informed that it was lucky coincidence that these two exhibitions opened at the same time! If you are heading to the RA it would be worth the extra ten minute walk to see how Ruben’s legacy lives on at the Parafin gallery with Hugo Wilson.
Hugo Wilson Hunt 4, 2014. Oil on canvas. 200 × 215 cm
Once you have had your fill examining the paintings, a hidden set of steps take you into a basement filled with intricate clay sculptures. I thought I had liked the paintings but his sculptures were what blew me away. Based on the Twelve Labours of Hercules, which appealed to the classics major in me, you could see echoes of the paintings upstairs in the animalistic abstract works. I could gaze at these for hours and still see something new.
Hugo Wilson Labour 8, 2014 Terracotta and waxed steel. 42 × 37 × 158 cm.
The clay was manipulated to be smooth as marble or rough and gouged which worked brilliantly. We all wondered what these would look like if they were enlarged to life size or in other mediums like porcelain or bronze.
There were also lovely, stark photographs that I unfortunately whizzed past but were filled with a sense of stillness compared to his other works but still full of detail and colour.
Have a scroll through the gallery website here or find him until Saturday at:
PARAFIN
18 Woodstock Street
London W1C 2AL
+44 (0)20 7495 1969
info@parafin.co.uk
As always, all credit for photos goes to the original site.
