HUGH CLEMONS

THE FLY AND THE WINDOW

September 23 - October 21, 2023
Opening Saturday, September 23rd 6–8pm

Sarah Brook Gallery is thrilled to present The Fly and The Window, the debut solo exhibition of British self-taught painter Hugh Clemons. He employs meticulous traditional painting techniques, layering pigment and glazes to create vibrant surfaces that invite the viewer to step cautiously into sparsely inhabited psychological spaces. He juxtaposes glass encasings, lamps, telephones, self-portraiture, references to art history and design, smoke, mirrors, and monoliths.

Clemons addresses his subjects in the language of vanitas, a genre of painting embodied most famously by the Dutch still life painters. Flowering beauty is framed as evanescent—the pest of decay is ever present. The artist deftly renders panes of glass as both subject and aperture, a framing of the truth while offering fragile, often fractured, protection from it. ‘Son, I’ve some news’ shatters the serenity of a spotless glass surface that stands upright within a dove grey background. An invisible projectile has left its mark, forever disrupting the structure’s stability and the light that shines through its stoic surface.

The Birth of Paranoia’ similarly breeds unease using even greater surrealist cues. Another glass pane stands vertically within darker slate surroundings. A pinpoint crack, perhaps the same projectile, is hoarded upon by flies as milk drips from its interior. A disembodied nipple inhabits the lower section of the glass pane, apart from the damage above but casting its shadow into the background. These images speak of invisibility made visible, the uneasy entrance into silent psychological spaces, and, most anxiously, about the passing of time and our mortal inevitability. Foucault wrote, “The relation of language to painting is an infinite relation… it is in vain that we say what we see; what we see never resides in what we say.”

‘Alternate Ending (on the desert floor)’ uses perspective to create the illusion of a multifaceted monolith. We see a seamless glass box encasing a tiny landscape painting. The protected canvas depicts a lush land slowly becoming barren and turning to desert. This image and its enclosure are nestled in a pile of lightly sparkling sand, extending the desert into the empty grey space. Together, these sit before a shimmering silver tower disrupted by a singular minuscule fly inhabiting its surface and a haunting black zig-zagged box perched at the top. The artist refers to these crooked encasements as ‘death boxes,’ and they recur throughout the exhibition in various material forms. Sometimes they frame or hold objects, such as flowers or a telephone in ‘An Answer To Terrorize.’ Other times, they are solid and foreboding. Ultimately, it emerges from its painted form into the physical gallery space as the lone ceramic sculpture in the show.

We reencounter the death box in ‘I don’t know, I just felt like digging a hole.’ It is half-buried in a pile of glistening soil, illuminated from within before an erect slab of glass. The light, however, avoids representation on the glass surface. Similarly, in Robert Smithson’s infamous work ‘Leaning Mirror,’ the mirror is positioned in a pile of earth at such an angle that it is nearly impossible for the viewer to catch their reflection. By removing the spectator from the composition, ‘Leaning Mirror’ draws the eye solely to the sky above and the dirt below—a minimal yet powerful sentiment echoed in Clemons’ work: from whence we come, there we go.

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Hugh Clemons (b. 1993, Leamington Spa, UK) is a self-taught painter living in London. He began learning to paint at the age of 22 and moved to Amsterdam where he became captivated by the Dutch Masters and particularly the tradition of still life painting. His solo exhibition ‘The Fly and The Window’ at Sarah Brook Gallery will be his first show ever. 

“I don’t know, I just felt like digging a hole.” 2023
Oil on panel
36 x 24 in

There’s No Place Like High Mourning, 2022
Oil on panel
36 x 24 in

Still Life: 2, 2023
Oil on panel
16 x 12 in

Still Life: 3, 2023
Oil on panel
16 x 12 in

Alternate Ending (On the Desert Floor), 2023
Oil on panel
36 x 24 in

Permanent Paranoia, 2022
Oil on panel
24 x 18 in

The Dream Visitation Machine, 2022
Oil on panel
36 x 24 in 

Breast, 2023
Oil on panel
24 x 18 in

Son, I’ve some news, 2023
Oil on panel
24 x 18 in

An Answer to Terrorize, 2022
Oil on panel
36 x 24 in

Still Life: 1, 2022
Oil on panel
16 x 12 in

The Birth of Paranoia, 2023
Oil on panel
24 x 18 in

The Death Box, 2023
Unglazed stoneware
3.5 x 7 x 3.75 in