ALEX HUBBARD – IN THE NEAR FIELD
2021-04-19Hubbard’s paintings are material wonders, describing and inscribing the complex processes that eventuate into them as final forms—the mixing and manipulating of various semi-industrial products like resin, urethane, latex, and fiberglass, and the application of semi-industrial processes like UV printing and, in his recent works, the layering of transparent sheets cast from the works topographies’ themselves. In the very latest paintings, Hubbard has turned to applying oil paint atop all this, but that move makes him no less a chemist compared to the typical wielder of sable-tipped brushes.
In his videos, meanwhile, technology is baldly misused. His earlier video works often feature him in the role of scientist-conductor—wearing the occasional lab coat or hazmat suit—of abstruse methodologies and the operation of hysterically jury-rigged contraptions moving toward a punctuating event. In more recent years, his détourned video effects become the protagonists of screwball comedies, flaunting the seams of the work rather than concealing them in favor of the ultra-smooth façade they were designed to create.
Opposite – Default Settings , 2021
Exhibition runs through to May 28th, 2021
Galerie Eva Presenhuber
39 Great Jones Street
NY 10012
New York
