Overview
Flowers is pleased to announce Studiolospective, an exhibition of new paintings by the renowned British surrealist Patrick Hughes.
'My pictures seem to move as you move. They come to life when we bring them to life. This is because they are made in perspective the wrong way round, inreverspective. If you bob down in front of them, it is as if you have gone up, and as you walk past to the right it is as if you have gone to the left. I am delighted to bring together paintings for this exhibition, which move between the centuries.' Patrick Hughes, London, 2014
The centerpiece of the exhibition is A Study of the Studiolo. A studiolo, meaning 'a little studio,' was in 15th century Italy a small, often extravagantly decorated room reserved for studying, writing, and reading - all correlations with Hughes himself, an avid academic.
Hughes based his painting on the studiolo of Federico, the Duke of Montefeltro, who commissioned his marquetry studioli in Gubbio and Urbino in about 1480. The Urbino Studiolo in Italy still exists in-situ, while the Gubbio Studiolo was re-installed in its own room in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1996. Having visited both studioli several times, Hughes brings the studiolo to life again in his three-dimensional reverse perspective context, almost six hundred years after Brunelleschi invented perspective in 1420.
Other works in the exhibition include Going into Reverse,which depicts multiple library shelves filled with books, seamlessly moving across the painting and luring the viewer into its space, and Flowers New York, a reverspective rendering of the Chelsea gallery space and works of some of its stable of artists.
Hughes' painted reliefs baffle his audience, demonstrating how deceptive appearances can be. As one walks towards the seemingly flat paintings they instead loom out, creating a disorientating, 'moving' experience. Preconceived assumptions of eye and brain are challenged, inevitably raising questions about our perception and the subconscious, on which Hughes has extensively written and lectured, including at the American Institute of Physics and UC Berkeley's conference on neuroaesthetics. Hughes' witty illusions are not meant to confuse us (although they do), but aim to clarify our relation to reality. Instead of describing paradox, we can now experience it interactively.
Complementing the exhibition will be the screening of the short film Hughesually: The Art of Patrick Hughes by the British feature film director Jake West.
