To celebrate the opening up of our summer season, Kunsten will present one of the leading contemporary American painters, Shara Hughes.
Hughes’ works are at once surreal and abstract, inviting and alarming, beautiful and scary. Their bold, clashing colours and shifting perspectives manifest into immersive and dream-like landscapes. Hughes’ “invented landscapes,” as she calls them, neither depict true-to-life landscapes nor the imagined. Though profoundly personal, her fantastical worlds are also open-ended, inviting us in as portals to our own experiences and psychological discovery.
The exhibition will consist mainly of new works, including works on paper, as well as large-scale paintings inspired by the Nordic landscape and light. After a short residency in Skagen, Hughes also became drawn to the horizon line, where the sea touches the sky, and how it changes constantly throughout the day. She said, “(I do think)…there’s always something to learn about the passing of time and what that does to anything living, whether it’s mentally or physically.”
Shara Hughes (b. 1981) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She earned a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and later attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her works have been included in numerous group exhibitions as well as solo shows in China, France, Switzerland, UK and USA. Her work is also represented in museum collections including the Dallas Museum of Art; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk; the Si Shang Art Museum, Beijing; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington; and the Whitney Museum of Art, New York.
The exhibition and catalogue are produced in collaboration with Pilar Corrias Gallery, London. Shara Hughes is represented by Pilar Corrias, London, Galerie Eva Presenhuber and David Kordansky Gallery.
Photo: Shara Hughes, Collide, 2022, Oil, acrylic and dye on canvas, Courtesy the artist, Pilar Corrias, London, David Kordansky Gallery, and Galerie Eva Presenhuber.
Enchanting color explosion
– Børsen
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
A labyrinthine trip around a lot of beautiful and daring colors and expressions
– Nordjyske
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
I am especially happy with how she tears the classic forms to pieces through surreal interpretations
– Jyllands-Posten
❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
– Politiken