Strange Hell of Beauty B

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David Hutchinson
Strange Hell of Beauty B
2016

About the Item

Ink on Clayboard Panel, 12" x 9", WORDS ARE ELVES Series In reading the texts of Jean Genet, I am continuously amazed at how he utilized formally evocative language to entice his readers into a complex world of amoral imagery, using the persuasive power of language to seduce his audience into the world’s dark underbelly. Christian painters have been doing something similarly for multiple generations by visually translating challenging, inhuman stories into graphic representations with incredible magnetic pull. For nearly two decades, I have been trying to push this phenomenon by emphasizing modernism’s push-and-pull between presentation and content. A large part of the body of my work has been working with the texts and life of Jean Genet to examine how the nature of formalism can absorb and subsume questionable morality by willfully re-presenting the material in a different artistic vocabulary. The exhibition at the Lionheart Gallery is entitled, ‘Words are Elves’. Because my interests focus on the nature of conceptualizing images and the aesthetic experience, itseemed appropriate for me to turn my attention to a highly-regarded critique of Genet’s aesthetics. In his novel, Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr, the French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, offers an existential analysis of Genet’s psychology and morality. Sartre’s chapter on Genet’s aesthetics, ‘A Strange Hell of Beauty’, is the material from which this exhibition is based. In a seemingly unremarkable passage in this chapter, Sartre makes a passing statement: ‘words are elves’. It is an alarming observation that is not really lingered on; but in a follow-up statement Sartre compares a stylis to a wand - both having a magical ability to influence and transform imagery. Upon reading this short, throw-away passage, I immediately felt a strong parallel between the intent of the phrase, ‘words are elves’, and the emphasis of my own work. The works in this exhibition continue my concept-based practice of creating imagery that transforms written language into a coded visual language through the use of color ‘translations’ and patterned ‘transcriptions’. In the chromatic portions of my work, each block of color is a visual stand-in for a letter of the English alphabet (a = aquamarine, b = blue, c = crimson, d = dove gray, e = emerald, and so on). It is a chromatic alphabet based on English color names. Also in use in the works is my practice of transcribing the original texts in layers of overwriting, creating unreadable fields and patterns of hand writing. In previous works I have tended to keep these two practices of ‘translation’ and ‘transcription’ separate. In the works in this exhibition I am combining these two aesthetic approaches for the first time. “A Strange Hell of Beauty” Drawings: The ink on panel drawings are patterned transcriptions of the Sartre’s chapter, ‘A Strange Hell of Beauty’. The patterning in these drawings are loosely based on music staves, recalling very early drawings of mine in which I drew on music paper. The ‘staves’ here bounce off each other and the sides of the panels creating dense and dark, intercepting junctures that add depth and accidental highlights to the images.

Creator:
David Hutchinson
Creation Year:
2016
Dimensions:
Height: 12 in (30.48 cm)Width: 9 in (22.86 cm)
Medium:
Ink
Movement & Style:
Abstract
Period:
2010-
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Pound Ridge, NY
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU4241313443

Strange Hell of Beauty B

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