EXHIBITIONS
ALEX HUBBARD, Last Best Offer.
IMAGES | BIOGRAPHY | PRESS RELEASE
September 5 - October 11, 2008
Tony Wight Gallery is pleased to announce Last Best Offer, a solo exhibition by Alex Hubbard. This will be the artist's first exhibition with the gallery.
Playfully destructive and rigorously formal, Hubbard's tabletop videos—shot from above in a single take—bring together elements of painting, performance, and video into spatially disorienting sequences of activity. The videos' heavy editing and overdubbed sound both exaggerate and fragment their phrasing, which frequently hiccups, accelerates, and stutters.
Amidst the building and collapsing of the field within each video are glimpses of Hubbard's influences, either conscious or not. Random still frames reveal elegant and precise collages akin to Robert Motherwell's and moments reminiscent of Man Ray's layered rayographs. In combination and motion together, the effect is like a high speed slide show of hundreds of perfect abstract compositions. The images unfold in an often startling narrative, with Hubbard's surprise physical actions leaving the record of an image that constantly erases and recreates itself.
The painting and prints in the exhibition also make use of the aesthetics and physicality of collage—tearing, cutting, pasting, pouring. These works remain resolutely fixed in place, while the videos begin and end in quick succession. In still form, the content retains a sense sharp chaos, while allowing a contemplative view of the subtle details in color and texture. The simultaneous presentation of both videos and stills allows a more thorough exploration into the nature of action and consequence.
Alex Hubbard (American, b. 1975) has had solo exhibitions at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, New York; House of Gaga / Gaga Arte Contemporano; Castillo/Corrales, Paris; Reena Spauldings Fine Art, New York. Hubbard has presented work in group exhibitions at institutions including Greene Naftali, New York; the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; the Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris; and the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, New York.