Winter Collective II 2019

HUGO GALERIE is pleased to present Winter Collective II, the second of the season’s two group exhibitions. This diverse show includes paintings and sculptures in a myriad of media, sizes, and styles. 

François Anton’s mixed-media paintings delight with their central character’s awkward relatability—down to the chewing gum on the sole of his shoe. Bronze and plaster sculptures by Beth Carter are allegories of the human condition, as mythological as they are contemporary, as formidable as they are sensitive. Yves Crenn has developed a technique to texturize his hazy scenes that give the beachgoers and lifehouses such palpability you can almost smell the salty seabreeze. Fabienne Delacroix’s fanciful paintings delicately capture Paris’s belle époque past and twinkle with a joie de vivre as vivid as today. Philippe H. Dequesne composes highly structured canvases that captivate with their geometric perspective and edited attention to detail. Jernej Forbici’s painterly play of color promotes the artist’s environmentally conscious narrative; Forbici urges us to admire and protect nature’s beauty by stressing its gracious fragility. Ġoxwa employs an encaustic technique to lend her canvases a dimensionality and historicity reminiscent of frescos, yet the intimacy with which she engages her subjects replicate real-time encounters. The bucolic and immersive landscapes of Albert Hadjiganev engulf viewers as if they tumbled down a rabbit hole and into a pastoral memory of perfection. Patrick Pietropoli’s paintings are studies in precision; from their architectural tenacity to their concise color palettes, no detail is taken for granted. The harbors and seascapes of Xavier Rodés are nearly devotional in their ability to inspire tranquility and bring to life the serenity of an industrial space at peace. Benoît Trimborn’s lush landscapes are minutely articulated odes to the timeless and unmitigated wonder of Earth’s forests, fields, and waterways.