NEW YORK, NY.- The Studio Museum in Harlem will present British painter Hurvin Anderson in his first U.S. solo museum exhibition, Hurvin Anderson: Peter’s Series 2007-2009. This exhibition will include seven paintings and nine works on paper that engage traditions of landscape painting and abstraction.
Fascinated with places of social interaction, Anderson captures the unique social and cultural space of a small attic barbershop established in the home of Caribbean immigrants. For Anderson, the barbershop functions as a personal space loaded with imagery, and also houses intertwined political, economic and social histories of Caribbean immigrants in Britain during the 1950s and 1960s. Businesses such as these were created in peoples’ homes and served as spaces where people could come together to socialize and stay connected. The attic plays a duel role of a place which still exists and functions, yet recalls a much older and perhaps forgotten time; a place where history was quietly made.
Like many of Anderson’s other works, the pieces in “Peter’s Series” started as photographs. These he took one day while waiting for his father to finish getting a haircut. Finding the space both complex and ambiguous, Anderson explored the technical exercise of recreating it many times; continually reducing the interior architecture to its basic colors and simple geometric forms. Drawing from memory and imagination, Anderson creates new spaces and dialogue within each painting. At first intrigued by the physical features of the attic, the early paintings focus on the architecture of the barbershop, providing multiple perspectives of the space which function like portraits. In later paintings, he centralizes an anonymous figure in the barber’s chair, further negotiating between functional space and shared experience, while also providing a voyeuristic glimpse of a private moment.
Hurvin Anderson (b. 1965) was born in Birmingham, UK to Jamaican parents. He attended the Wimbledon School of Art from 1991-94, and the Royal College of Art from 1996-98. His work reflects his British upbringing alongside with his Caribbean heritage. He has painted several series which focus on private and public gathering places, taking form in landscapes, interior scenes, and portraits. Anderson was the artist-in-residence at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in 2006, and recently had his first solo museum show at the Tate Britain this past spring. In addition, he has exhibited at the Mead Gallery, the Warwick Arts Centre, and the Thomas Dane Gallery.
