The Berlin gallery is unveiling for the first time in the German capital the work of British visual artist Hannah Hughes. Her works, halfway between photography and sculpture, harbor the coexistence of states, surfaces and perspectives.
Something deeply soothing emerges from Hannah Hughes’ collages. Could it be these nuances of the same range of color which come and get undone with each other, these different textures which overlap or these rounded shapes which intermingle? The hybrid works of Hannah Hughes (1975) are, by nature, difficult to categorize. Her approach consists of constructing, from images of materials from magazines and photographs of cellulose packaging, recovered materials and rocks, flat sculptures combining solid and liquid phases, flatness and relief but also, 2D and 3D.
We then try to guess the nature of the material and the support used, imagining from one work to another rose quartz, lapis lazuli (blue) or even malachite (green). But also materials specific to everyday objects, such as cardboard or velvet. In this work of deconstructing the smooth nature of photography, the different elements reveal the roughness of a carpet, that of a volcanic rock or even the roundness of a precious stone.
From these assemblies of two-dimensional surfaces, however, emerge, at the same time, thickness and volume. A sensation of depth, more or less accentuated, which is the effect of the artificial shadows created from scratch by Hannah Hughes, coming to dress the negative space surrounding the sculptures, composed, cut out and photographed separately.
This work of superposed materials is depicted as an echo of the tensions that may exist between tectonic plates. Cut into lithic shapes and assembled according to their hues and textures, these fragments then have the appearance of strata which in turn overlap and merge, forming paintings of variations of the same color, of the same universe. Real dances of colors and textures, notably activated in large format collages thanks to the relief, this time very real, created by the voluntary peeling off of certain layers forming slits perceptible to the eye when we come to look at it leaning sideways.
In its oxymoronic momentum, Solid Slip is, as its name suggests, an inspiring reflection on the thing and its opposite, on being and appearing, on reality and dreams… whose borders ultimately prove to be so porous.
Noémie de Bellaigue
Solid Slip by Hannah Hughes at Galerie Robert Morat until June 1, 2024.
Galerie Robert Morat
Linienstraße 107
10115 Berlin
