GARY HUME
Mum
In his latest body of work Gary Hume focuses on a range of subjects, but at its core is a suite of highly personal paintings about memory and loss. His mother is 86 years old and suffers from dementia. And while the ostensible subjects of many of the new paintings are flowers, their titles — Mourning, Spent, Blind — reflect Hume’s thoughts of her. Mum on the Couch (2017), a more direct portrait, depicts the artist’s aging mother in her current condition, a poignant contrast to the vibrant woman of her son’s memories.
This catalogue includes large-format full-color reproductions of more than thirty new works. In addition to Hume’s signature aluminum panels, he recently began painting on large sheets of paper. His preferred paint, a highly reflective household gloss, creates textures and reflections on the paper that become an integral part of the work. As Alexander Nagel writes in the essay, “Apparitions of shifting light and shade playing over the surface, we are always part of their subject matter.”