CHICAGO – I first saw Richard Hull’s work in 1981 at his second exhibition in New York at the Phyllis Kind Gallery. We lost touch when Phyllis closed his gallery in 2009 and didn’t see each other again until 2016, when I wrote about visiting his studio in Chicago, where he has lived since the late 1970s. On my recent trip to Chicago, I didn’t think I’d be able to see, let alone write, his current exhibit, Richard Hull: Mirror and Bonesat Western Exhibitions, through April 22. I hadn’t considered writing about Hull’s work because we were about to collaborate on monoprints at Manneken Press in Bloomington, Illinois – something we had never done before.
Three surprises in the exhibition indicate that Hull is committed to penetrating new territories. In each of the gallery’s three distinct areas, Hull showcased something different than you might expect if you’ve followed his work. The artist is known for his paintings of abstract heads, or what he calls “stolen portraits,” which seem to both burst and bloom. Here he has included three horizontal paintings with his “portraits” and “figures” in the first gallery space: “Cabins”, “Departure” and “Exiles” (all from 2023). By moving away from the vertical format he has long adhered to for his abstract heads, Hull has challenged himself to consider another type of pictorial space.
The three paintings have little in common, suggesting that Hull neither found a way to work with a different pictorial space nor, more importantly, settled on just one. In “Cabins”, he superimposes vertical forms populating an abstract landscape with a thick, black and irregular network. On the right side of the painting, the thick black line encloses a series of shapes, surrounding a new shape. In the middle, the lines and shapes come closer to merging, while on the left side, the lattice looks like a ladder. Changes in the interrelation of the black line and the background prevent a uniform reading of the surface; the figure-ground relationship is one of the questions explored by Hull in the three horizontal paintings.
Does the “Départ” from Hull allude to the large and mysterious “Départ” diptych by Max Beckmann (1932-1935)? We seem to be inside an enclosed space with a large arched window. A group of figures apparently wearing caps is on the right side of the painting, facing left. On the left is another group of what appear to be three figures. Who is going and where is he going? Are the characters animals or humans or, more likely, a combination of the two? In “Departure”, the black arch visible in the background of the painting defines the environment as a room-like space and frames a blue field that reads as water or sky.
The ambiguous red background in “Exiles” seems to move from a wall on the left side of the painting to a window or door, or perhaps even a mirror, on the far right. Does the curved yellow band extend from the hair strands at the top left edge of the painting or from a path? Although we see the shapes, we cannot identify them exactly. Unlike his heads, I think Hull wants to bring the viewer closer to the realm of names without falling into the discursive.
In the space connecting the first and second gallery are “Teller” and “Crossing” (both 2023), two horizontal drawings made in colored pencil, charcoal and pencil. The largely white figure of “Teller” on the left appears to be both inside and outside the room, moving from space to space, bounded by the gray rectangular frame taking up much of the room. upper half of the drawing.
All of these changes and explorations did not prepare me for what was in the second gallery, which was full of large, mostly pink paintings. It’s like once Hull started using pink, he couldn’t help but let it take over and see how much pink he could put in a painting. This piece completes his work wonderfully. While all of the paintings share the subject matter of the abstract portrait, it is not repeated. In “Breath” (2021), made during the height of the pandemic, mottled tongue-like shapes appear to both fight and attempt to distance themselves from each other. There’s something oddly funny, slightly disturbing, oddly comical, and a bit scary about this work. The other pink paintings move in different directions.
The outlines of the smaller painting, “Verge” (2023), recall Arcimboldo and Bellini, Renaissance painters known for their portraits. That we cannot tell whether the form should be read as hair or as flesh is part of its meaning. Hull’s refusal to become explicitly referential and figurative differentiates his heads from those of artists like Jim Nutt and Peter Saul. The uniqueness of his work, and his own relentless desire for change, speak well for his future. What strikes me in this exhibition are the different paths that Hull has chosen to explore and the confidence he has in presenting them to the public.
Richard Hull: Mirror and Bones continues at Western Exhibitions (1709 West Chicago Avenue, Chicago, Illinois) through April 22. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
