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24/5/2006

Gary Hume

White Cube, London

Cave Paintings

White Cube is pleased to present a new series of works by British artist Gary Hume. Recalling the Madonna and Child of Renaissance and Baroque traditions and using marble as his medium, Hume has fused subject and material to create opulent ‘paintings’ whose hard, bejewelled surface has replaced the slick glossy plane of previous works.

Entitled Cave Paintings, these seven marble tableaux use a variety of different stones set against each other in collaged sections that appear like tectonic plates. These are held together by a lead tracery that provides both the edge to the expanses of colour as well as a kind of automatic drawing, traced by the natural faults and veins inherent in the stone itself. Employing a technique traditionally used to carve epitaphs into gravestones, Hume uses the lead tracery in these works in much the same way that his etched lines delineated the slick swathes of colour in his high gloss aluminium paintings.

Since Antiquity, highly polished limestone has been used to adorn the walls and floors of civic buildings and palaces. Today this opulent material has been variously infused with colour, quartz and mirror shards and adapted for the domestic interior. Hume uses both natural and man-made marbles as his palette, in essence pitting the sensibilities of an ornate Baroque de'cor against the aesthetic of the young city professional's starter flat. One large panel for example, melds muted green slate with wood-grain marble and fawn granite in contrast to another that juxtaposes the complimentary tones of sparkling purple and yellow.

Hume's monolithic compositions are hand carved and richly decadent, patterned with an expansive visual tapestry that combines elements drawn from the natural world with powerful symbols of human birth and the dawn of mankind. As with all of Hume’s work, the figurative elements are reduced and suggestive. When a mother and child is depicted, for example, it is overlaid with flora and fauna. In others, the maternal presence exists only as a suggestion, as a pair of eyes protecting the fragility of new life or as a character off-stage, indicated through the gestures made by the child.

In the upstairs gallery the smooth lustre of the Cave Paintings is continued in a series of thirteen dense canvases combining chalk, charcoal and oil paint. Displayed alongside these are two large-scale bronze owls that continue Hume's interest in a childhood pictorial idiom.

Internationally recognised in both Europe and America, Hume has exhibited extensively around the world. In 1996 he was the British representative at the Sao Paulo Bienal and in the same year was nominated for the Turner Prize. In 1999 he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale, since then he has had solo exhibitions at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1999), the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh (1999), Fundacao La Caixa, Barcelona (2000), Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2003), Kunsthaus Bregenz (2004) and the Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover (2004).

For further information please contact Sophie Greig or Sara Macdonald on + 44 (0) 20 7930 5373.

Private View: Thursday 25 May 6-8pm

White Cube
48 Hoxton Square - London
open: Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 6pm.

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