Matthew Marks is pleased to announce Gary Hume: Yardwork, the next exhibition at his gallery at 522 West 22nd Street.

The fourteen new paintings on view were made in Hume’s studio, which is in an old barn in upstate New York. The pictures explore familiar themes in Hume’s work, including flowers, birds, doors, and female figures. In the new work, however, the rural surroundings of Hume’s studio have influenced his specific subjects. The doors are now barn doors, as opposed to the hospital doors found in his earlier works, the blackbirds, roses, and daisies are all things he sees from his window, as opposed to images from books or media. The only found imagery in the new work are the paintings of a young woman with a ponytail, which come from a photograph Hume found on Google after typing in the word “ponytail”.

Hume’s signature use of glossy enamel paint on aluminum panels in unusual color combinations continues in these paintings. In several, Hume has applied the industrial paint in thick relief for the first time, forming distinct ridges that clearly define the individual shapes within each work. In others, he has used a non-glossy finish more extensively for the first time.

Gary Hume (b. 1962) lives and works in London and Accord, New York. This will be his eighth one-person exhibition at Matthew Marks Gallery since 1991. Hume represented Britain at the São Paulo Biennale in 1996 and at the Venice Biennale in 1999. The artist’s work has been the subject of one-person exhibitions at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin and the Kunsthaus Bregenz in Austria. Last summer, a retrospective of Hume’s Door paintings was held at Modern Art, Oxford.