Over the last three years, Hurvin Anderson has focused his attention on a particular subject – or ‘image’ as he
refers to it – a hotel complex on the north coast of Jamaica which he visited on a trip to the country of his
heritage. Reverb, spanning both spaces at Thomas Dane Gallery is the first time the artist will present works
exclusively from this series, and offers a unique insight into one of Anderson’s most arresting cycles of paintings
to date.
As often with Anderson the legibility and clarity of the scenes he presents are left ambiguous and open-ended. Is
the hotel derelict and slowly being taken over by vegetation, or is paradisiac nature losing the battle against the
concrete ruins? Anderson likes to entertain and draw upon that ambiguity: he calls it his ‘no man’s land – where
structure and clarity intermingle with looseness and fluidity.
Anderson almost never sketches while in the landscape, but instead takes photographs and works from these as
well as from memory. Whether he focuses his attention on more intimate interior scenes of barbershops, or more
elegiac landscapes, his methods and thinking are the same. He will study every plant, analyse every architectural
pattern, research every brand of hair product until he understands how they are made, how they are structured,
and how they can be depicted.
This method of ‘rehearsing’ which Anderson shares with other painters, has perhaps never been as apparent as in
his ‘Jungle Garden’ paintings – a focus in itself within the Jamaican Hotel Series. Here the process becomes even
more deeply analytical. It is not so much that he wants to learn a painting and make more of them, but rather,
make the picture again and again, in order to know it more and more.
| Duration | 12 October 2021 - 04 December 2021 |
| Times | Tuesday to Friday 11am-6pm, Saturday 12pm-6pm or by appointment. |
| Cost | Free |
| Venue | Thomas Dane Gallery |
| Address | 3 & 11 Duke Street St James's, London, SW1Y 6BN |
| Contact | / info@thomasdane.com / www.thomasdane.com |