Sean Scully

EVENT DESCRIPTION

Ben Brown Fine Arts is thrilled to announce our first solo exhibition of celebrated abstract artist Sean Scully at the Hong Kong gallery. The exhibition will feature seven new paintings from the artist’s studio, and follows Scully’s lauded retrospective at the Hong Kong Arts Centre in 2018, which was co-organized by Ben Brown Fine Arts.

Born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1945, Sean Scully was raised in South London. He attended Croydon College of Art and received a Bachelor of Arts from Newcastle University in 1972. Scully moved to New York City in the mid 1970s, where he soon became a leader in the shift from then-dominant Minimalism, to arrive at a more emotional, humanistic abstraction in painting. Scully formulated his own abstract language and inimitable style, based on the grid and infused with a spirituality and reverence for colour and light, that has earned him the standing as one of the most preeminent artists of his time.

Scully’s mesmerizing paintings consist of varyingly sized horizontal and vertical bands of colour, which seem to vibrate in interwoven grid formations that take inspiration from architecture, landscape and the interplay of light. In 1969, Scully first travelled to Morocco where he was deeply impacted by the arresting landscape and in particular the ubiquitous multi-coloured striped textiles he encountered there. The artist has also been greatly inspired by his travels to Mexico, where he was struck by the relationship between the dazzling light and ancient architecture. Earlier life influences on his work evolved from his exposure to jazz and R&B as a youth in London and a factory job at the age of 18 stacking flattened corrugated cardboard boxes into trucks. These myriad influences have contributed to a trailblazing body of work that has encompassed various series, sizes and materials over the decades, yet remains committed to his distinctive and radically novel approach to abstract painting.

The exhibition features seven spectacular paintings, including two from Scully’s Landline series, four Wall of Light paintings, and a Robe diptych on aluminium. Untitled (Landline), 2022, is comprised of thick and gestural horizontal bands of seemingly sun-drenched colours hovering above an ochre ground, all further illuminated by the aluminium support, creating a natural dialogue between abstraction and landscape. Wall Deep Orange and Wall of Light Yellow Field, both painted in 2022, pulse with vibrancy, their rhythmic patterning of painterly blocks of colour hinting at the play of light and stone that has long fascinated the artist. The gallery space is transformed with these dynamic works, some scaling as large as 160 x 160 cm.

ABOUT THE ARTIST / ORGANISER

Scully’s work is held in prominent public and private collections around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; National Gallery of Art and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; Tate, London; Albertina, Vienna; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Guangzhou Museum of Art, Guangzhou; and China Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, China.

Scully has received numerous awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1983 and the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1984. Scully was elected a Royal Academician in 2013 and was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1989 and 1993. In 2014, Scully became the first Western artist to have a career-length retrospective in China with Follow the Heart: The Art of Sean Scully 1964 – 2014, which included over 100 paintings and travelled from Shanghai to Beijing.