ART CITIES:Zurich-Shara Hughes
Shara Hughes’ works are vibrant and turbulent, a riot of color, depicting imagined spaces which appear as semi-fictional landscapes. Trees, lakes and rolling hills are all present in the work, grounding these scenes in something tangible and physical, but there are fantastical elements also, with explosive tones and formal flourishes which sit at odds with the landscapes we might encounter out in the world. Despite the densely detailed compositions, these works are created instinctively, and reflect the American artist’s internal state.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Galerie Eva Presenhuber Archive
In her new exhibition “Day By Day By Day”, Shara Hughes, who is well known for her works on canvas, presents drawings and monoprint drawings on paper accompanied by two paintings. While focused on drawing, Hughes continues developing her concept of psychological or invented landscapes, which rather than depicting real landscapes, unfold her inner self and radiate moods, emotional states, as well as thoughts on painting. She works intuitively using expressive brushstrokes and vibrant colors; nonetheless, her work is informed by a knowledge of art history and traces of fin de siècle styles such as Fauvism, Art Nouveau, or German Expressionism appear in her oeuvre. In contrast to how her paintings are made, Hughes’ drawings were not made in the studio but rather at home in a more relaxed, private environment free from any expectations. In this tranquil setting, Hughes creates drawings using ink, watercolor, markers, crayons, oil pastels, colored pencils, and paint pens. The nature of these materials do not allow for many changes once the color is applied, and each drawing is finished in one session. This direct technique, with its harsh lines in combination with the private atmosphere, allows the artist to delve even deeper into her practice, which radically draws from the inward. The show also comments on the pandemic in 2020, which has made planning impossible and necessitates a profound sense of the present; as the exhibition title implies, we must live Day By Day By Day. Hughes compares the works made in one session to the parts of a sentence, while her paintings can be seen to form a story: “I often think about my drawings as a run-on sentence that never ends. I believe the drawings work as a release of my subconscious rather than fully forming something that has evolved and resolved itself. I think they open up questions rather than answering them and that’s the kind of vulnerable edge I’m looking for”. The term monoprint drawing refers to a technique Hughes has developed, which consists of using the discarded sheets of former prints. In these prints, the artist removed most of the paint applied on the printing plate using a sheet of paper, thus creating a pale ghost of the motif made up of the diluted colors. This then served as the basis for the actual work, while the original, much more defined print constitutes the discarded remnants of the work. In her monoprint drawings, Hughes returns to these stark forms, which were initially used to create the ghost to serve as a subtle structure with colors that only can be produced in the printing process. Therefore, the monoprint drawings are neither a copy nor a different version of another print but rather a literal déjà-vu, a landscape one may have already seen before, or might be a mere effect of one’s imagination. Though they depict invented landscapes whose composition and style allude to art history, Hughes’ motifs emanate from moods or emotional states of self-reflection in the everyday or reflect upon states of mind most people are familiar with.
Info: Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Rämistrasse 33, Zurich, Duration: 2/6-19/9/20, Days & Hours: thu-Fri 12:00-18:30, Sat 11:00-17:00, www.presenhuber.com
