Opening Reception: Tuesday, September 5th, 5-10 PM
Hours: September 6 - 12 10 AM - 7 PM
The Bonnier Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Enthusiasm, a solo exhibition of new and recent works by American artist Richard Höglund on view from Tuesday, September 5, 2023 at Art Cake on 214 40th Street with a reception for the artist from 5 pm - 10 pm.
The show brings together five years of conceptual groundwork and experimentation. Using traditional metal point drawing and oil painting techniques, Höglund explores approaches to painting throughout history, in this case synthesizing renaissance, baroque and modernist frames of reference. Höglund draws from both visual and literary historical references to explore his unique blend of abstraction and figuration. The surfaces of the paintings, underscored in gold and silver, become alchemic vessels for Höglund’s drawings, which continue to push and pull against the painting depending on the material. “It’s especially important for me to keep returning to these paintings as they evolve,” says Höglund, “the narrative persists, keeps creeping back in as the drawing resurfaces, as the oxidizing metal point makes its way up through the layers of paint.”
The earliest painting in the exhibition, Descent of Nysa, was started in 2018 and included wine and fire as primary media among Höglund’s usual assortment of metal points, ground rocks and bones, and emulsions. Depicting the birthplace of Dionysus, the large-scale landscape would mark the beginning of a five-year exploration of the mythic figure. The newer works, painted during spring and early summer, take their inspiration from historical paintings and texts alike. The Eternal Arrival (Enthusiasm XV) isolates and petrifies Dionysus’s cape from Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne, suggesting enthusiasm as a constant state of catalyzing motion. Another work, Naxos Passage (Enthusiasm XIII), plays on a reversal of the tradition of ut pictura poesis and ekphrastic poetry, illustrating a passage from Ezra Pound’s Cantos and the Homeric Hymns. In Höglund’s words: “I want everything in the picture […] I want the transcendent singe of the unnamed, of the abstract, and the mist over gray seas, the white haze that unites sea and sky. I want the dark. I want the light. Painting, in a word. The whole catastrophe.”
ABOUT RICHARD HÖGLUND Born in 1982, Richard Höglund studied art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and semiology at MIT in Boston, USA. He holds a MFA (DNSEP, 2008) obtained at the Haute école des arts du Rhin, in Strasbourg, France. In 2013, Höglund was selected by Tacita Dean to participate in her workshop at the Fundación Botín in Santander. His paintings are considerations of History and Language. The Dallas Museum of Art recently acquired Höglund’s monumental painting, XIII STATION: MNEMOSYNON (History Painting VI: Via Crucis), for its permanent collection. Solo exhibitions and projects include: Four Quartets, Waddington Custot, London, 2023; Minyades, The Bonnier Gallery, Miami (US); 2021 Vine Pictures, Ronchini Gallery, London (UK); 2020 V énus piquée par un buisson de roses, Vine Pictures, Galerie Flore, Brussels (BE); The Bonnier Gallery, Miami USA (2019); Custot Gallery, Dubai, UAE (2016); Ronchini Gallery, London (2016); Skaftfell, Seyðisfjörður, Iceland (2015); Tête, Berlin, Germany (2012); Dimensions Variable, Miami, USA (2012); Mamco, Geneva, Switzerland (2010); Nina Johnson, Miami, USA (2009); Le Salon du Dessin Contemporain, Par is, France (2008); La Chaufferie, Strasbourg, France (2006). Group exhibitions include: Le Salon de Septembre, GSL Gallery, Paris (2023); Rachofsky Collection, Dallas, US (2021); The Bonnier Gallery, Miami, US (2018); Custot Gallery, Dubai, UAE (2017); Villa Iris, Santander, Spain (2013); Bob Rauschenburg Gallery, Fort Myers, USA (2013); New World School of the Arts, Miami, US (2011); Bakehouse Art Complex, Miami, USA (2010); Musée de l’Oeuvre Notre Dame, Strasbourg, France (2007); National Art Gallery, Sofia, Bulgaria (2007); La Bellevilloise, Paris (2006).
For more information and available images please contact: miriam@thebonniergallery.com
