27 November 2008 – 11 January 2009
One in the Other is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new work by Luke Caulfield.
Caulfield’s recent work has continued to brake down the unitary, singular approach to painting it once had. Where once the issue of authorship was confined to a conventional entity, there now coexists an ambiguity of ownership and collaboration. His new exhibition continues with the theme of the alter ego, named Hurm Must, who first appeared in Caulfield’s work a few years ago. Hurm Must makes, crates and stacks paintings, possibly to hide or protect them after their documentation. Their documentation is made up of in situ works in brightly lit stairwells, window bays and interim corridors and are painted, Caulfield says, ‘by the documenter’, these are hung in the main gallery space. They rework and reanimate incipient subject matter from counterpart works, creating a pairing. Caulfield describes Hurm Must as ‘an anxious man, his paintings based on duplication, doppelgangers and split personalities’. In his role as the documenter, Caulfield appropriates the work, photographing and then painting the photograph in order to get closer to the materiality of the original painting. To one side of the main gallery space is a dimly lit room, alluding to the work place of Hurm Must. In here are the by products of Must’s activities, it is messy, darkened and unkempt.
Much of Caulfield’s imagery is taken from Gothic, Renaissance and Classical themes and the appropriation and reworking of the themes of medieval devotional painting. The role of Hurm Must is that of a fugitive entity, which is unregulated. A type of untapped consciousness. It is also a mechanism by which Caulfield can divide and resurrect, splinter and multiply the subject matter of his work. To look at his old work, these themes have been prevalent for sometime. An early painting ‘ride to live/live to ride’ presents reversal and repitition in the form of a rebus; the title echoing the split mirroring effect of the image, where certain details are replicated as though mirrored. The techniques of Hurm Must are rough hewn and lo-maintenance. Wood is chiselled and splintered and partly discloses the painted surfaces. The effect of this, to some degree, is to turn the paintings into objects, but to also obscure and conceal them somehow. This contrasts with the activities of the ‘documenter’ whose paintings are clear, full of light and geometrically ordered.
Caulfield left The Slade in 2000. He has been in exhibitions at the Cornerhouse Gallery, Manchester, Milton Keynes Gallery, Northern Galley of Contemporary Art, Sunderland, Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham, Laurent Delaye, London and Bloomberg, London. He has also had solo exhibitions in London and Norway and will take up a residency at The British School in Rome in January. His work is featured in the new publication Hellbound: New Gothic Art by Francesca Gavin.
HM0055 Documentation 2008
Acrylic on canvas
114 x 91.5cm
HM0057 Documentation 2008
Acrylic on canvas
114 x 91.5cm
HM0060 Documentation 2008
Acrylic on canvas
152 x 228cm
HM0062 Documentation 2008
Acrylic on canvas
91.5 x 114cm
HM0063 Documentation 2008
Acrylic on canvas
228 x 152cm
HM0064 Documentation 2008
Acrylic on canvas
228 x 152cm