Louis Reed
568 Grand St 10002
info@louisreed.nyc
Alex Ross Hutton
Delayed Gratitude
December 3 - February 1
As a mischievous child reading Playboy, I came across a cartoon of Larry Flint looking at a picture. His speech bubble read “wow, look at those fallopian tubes.” The cartoonist was chewing over a kernel of truth: images can lose their power when too much is exposed. Painting is no different and often forfeits its ability to excite when nothing is left to the imagination. Alex Ross Hutton is rare among academically skilled painters, rather than indulge in virtuosity to no end, he delivers a flurry of master brushstrokes that is enlivened and punctuated by restraint.
At first glance all the figures in Dream Crowd appear to be sheep rendered with just enough paint so that we know what we are looking at. Yet, the absence of any hint of an eye, makes the species of the central figure unclear. Maybe it is the dominant animal in the group, a canine? We will never know. And, just like being unable to tell if the curtains match the blinds, this makes the painting pleasurable.
Hutton takes on technology, loneliness, desire, and voyeurism but not in so much detail that his works become symbols. His paintings manage to be about the world and how paint is applied to canvas at the same time.
The source material for Curious Arrangement, and Floater 3 & 4 are images from wildlife cameras that the artist would comb through during COVID lockdowns. These scenes stir up conflicted feelings from those years, when we had to ask how animals (including us) make peace with threats, both seen and invisible. In Gobble a blue disposable glove, puffed up like an arts and crafts turkey, is hidden in underbrush and sends a melancholy pang through the viewer. We long for a slower more isolated world, even if it was pandemic ridden. Delicates, the most recently painted work, uses very few strokes to conjure eroticism, a backdrop full of mystery, a venue to meet people, the laundromat.
The thesis put forth by all Hutton’s work is that a combination of pauses, stops, and flourishes composes a more meaningful canvas than the instant gratification of seeing or making a complete rendering of life exactly how it looks. The artist finds a deeper purpose and sense of gratitude in creating vessels for his (and our own) interior thoughts and feelings, which because they are painted “true to life” contain the space for emotional and pictorial vicissitudes.
