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Lot Essay
A vivid dreamscape set in a magical realm, You Spell Me is a vibrant early work by Shara Hughes. Executed in 2010, it exemplifies the complex, playful interior scenes which occupied her between 2006 and 2014, and which ultimately propelled her to international acclaim. From a rich concoction of oil, acrylic, enamel, oil pastel and spray paint, Hughes conjures a mysterious chamber. At one end stands a blazing red brick wall; below, a psychedelic neon floor beams outwards to a seemingly weightless expanse of speckled midnight blue. Strange otherworldly objects bedeck the table and bookshelves; a sequined cauldron bubbles and a glittering fire crackles, while an audience of toy-like characters surveys the scene from the top of a ladder. On the left-hand wall hangs Hans Holbein the Younger’s The Ambassadors (1533), angled so that the famous hidden skull at the centre resolves into full view. This art-historical apparition—a rare explicit reference within Hughes’ oeuvre—seems to allegorise the magical illusory forces at work in her canvas, where a wand still glows brightly upon the table. It is a thrilling testament to the sorcery of art-making, and an insight into her internal world.
Over the past fifteen years, Hughes has taken her place as one of the foremost painters of her generation. Last year she mounted solo exhibitions at the Yuz Museum, Shanghai, the Contemporary Art Museum, St Louis, Le Consortium, Dijon and the Garden Museum, London—her first UK museum show; she will exhibit at the Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland, this autumn. At the time of You Spell Me, she was already beginning to garner critical acclaim. Having graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design, she had mounted her first solo exhibition in 2007, followed by a sell-out debut at Museum 52 in London. In 2010, she returned to the city for her second exhibition there, having recently moved back to her native Atlanta, Georgia, after completing two artist residencies in Denmark. During this period, her interior scenes evolved into rich, multifaceted spaces, drawing together abstract experiments in colour, pattern and texture with objects, symbols and images pulled from her surroundings, her imagination and the history of art. This composite approach, eloquently showcased here, would later feed into her landscape paintings: both these and her interiors are viewed by the artist as self-portraits of sorts, offering glimpses of the way in which her mind processes visual stimuli.
While Hughes has occasionally referenced specific artworks in her canvases—Rubens’s The Massacre of the Innocents (circa 1611-1612), for example, in her 2009 painting La La Land—the present work’s invocation of Holbein stands out for its apparent metaphorical function. Its miraculous trompe l’oeil seems to speak directly to the processes at work in Hughes’ painting, where spells, potions, rituals and incantations generate a world of illusion. The work’s central motif is echoed by the Picasso-like skull that sits in a jar upon the shelf, while its sense of shifting resolution is played out upon Hughes’ swirling multicoloured floor: the artist has described how at certain times of day, she would lay on her back in her studio and watch the rainbow patterns cast by a prism she kept by the window. Other art-historical invocations abound: from the brick wall, reminiscent of Philip Guston, to the perspectival play and vibrant palette that call to mind David Hockney’s domestic scenes. In this context, the scene is less a magician’s lair than an artist’s studio: the gleaming wand, similarly, becomes a paintbrush. It is a vivid portrait of art’s power to extend the limits of our imagination, and to reveal the wonderment within the objects and spaces of our everyday lives.
Over the past fifteen years, Hughes has taken her place as one of the foremost painters of her generation. Last year she mounted solo exhibitions at the Yuz Museum, Shanghai, the Contemporary Art Museum, St Louis, Le Consortium, Dijon and the Garden Museum, London—her first UK museum show; she will exhibit at the Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland, this autumn. At the time of You Spell Me, she was already beginning to garner critical acclaim. Having graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design, she had mounted her first solo exhibition in 2007, followed by a sell-out debut at Museum 52 in London. In 2010, she returned to the city for her second exhibition there, having recently moved back to her native Atlanta, Georgia, after completing two artist residencies in Denmark. During this period, her interior scenes evolved into rich, multifaceted spaces, drawing together abstract experiments in colour, pattern and texture with objects, symbols and images pulled from her surroundings, her imagination and the history of art. This composite approach, eloquently showcased here, would later feed into her landscape paintings: both these and her interiors are viewed by the artist as self-portraits of sorts, offering glimpses of the way in which her mind processes visual stimuli.
While Hughes has occasionally referenced specific artworks in her canvases—Rubens’s The Massacre of the Innocents (circa 1611-1612), for example, in her 2009 painting La La Land—the present work’s invocation of Holbein stands out for its apparent metaphorical function. Its miraculous trompe l’oeil seems to speak directly to the processes at work in Hughes’ painting, where spells, potions, rituals and incantations generate a world of illusion. The work’s central motif is echoed by the Picasso-like skull that sits in a jar upon the shelf, while its sense of shifting resolution is played out upon Hughes’ swirling multicoloured floor: the artist has described how at certain times of day, she would lay on her back in her studio and watch the rainbow patterns cast by a prism she kept by the window. Other art-historical invocations abound: from the brick wall, reminiscent of Philip Guston, to the perspectival play and vibrant palette that call to mind David Hockney’s domestic scenes. In this context, the scene is less a magician’s lair than an artist’s studio: the gleaming wand, similarly, becomes a paintbrush. It is a vivid portrait of art’s power to extend the limits of our imagination, and to reveal the wonderment within the objects and spaces of our everyday lives.