Nigel Hall
Spring Turning
Galerie Andres Thalmann, Paris
Opening Saturday, 15th June 2024, 6 – 8 pm
Exhibition, 18th june – 18th October, 2024
With their elegance and balance, the works of British artist Nigel Hall are truly impressive.
Hall‘s sculptures, made of bronze, wood or steel, are composed of elliptical shapes that intertwine and encircle one another or are superimposed one atop the other. In spite of the enormous size of some of these works, or the sheer weight of the material he uses, the sculptures give the appearance of lightness, of dynamism – sometimes even fragility.
But Hall works with his world of geometric shapes not only as a sculptor; he also translates them into drawings and paintings in which circles, ellipses and rectangles seem to dance around each other, captivating the viewer with the apparent depth of these two-dimensional images.
On display in the exhibition Spring Turning is the entire repertoire that Hall uses in his art – from sculptures to paintings to drawings. Works from 2012 will be on show alongside new works from 2024. In this most recent group of works, Hall has devoted himself to the fascinating expressive possibilities of ellipses seen from different perspectives. Depending on where the viewer is standing, the space he creates might appear concave or convex.
The exhibition is named after Hall‘s new, large-format sculpture. This title is both a reference and an homage to the source of inspiration for this work. As the artist explains, “One of the larger new works in the exhibition is called Spring Turning, which happens to be the title of a painting from 1936 by the American painter Grant Wood. It shows the smooth hills of his native Iowa, and I found unexpected echoes of it in my new work. This undulating, seductive landscape can be found in the chalk hills of Sussex and to some extent in the area of the west country where I grew up and has always had a strong appeal to me.”
Finding inspiration for his abstract works in landscapes or natural phenomena, Hall may take wave-shaped hills, the outlines of treetops or the simple interplay of light and shadow as the starting point for his works. He then translates these impressions into a reduced language of geometric images. As he explains about his sculpture Spring Turning, “The elliptical rings of the work are supported and counterpoised by a leaning elliptical block which isolates segments of the rings. A sense of containment and separation is evoked here, in strong contrast to the light, airiness and openness of the elements outside.” Hall‘s works are emotionally charged; their geometric shapes are arranged into a dynamic and dramatic composition, visualizing the complex and abstract themes that Hall explores through his art.
The interplay and merging of opposites is another characteristic of the work of this British artist. For example, the drawing 1990 (page 36) depicts a supposedly rectangular shape with a large black circle on its surface. At the same time, the orange-coloured surface contains circular recesses that suggest something is absent. As viewers, we are forced to use our imagination to complete these apparently incomplete forms. As a composition, 1990 is perfectly balanced between fullness and emptiness and yet when we look at it, we seem to be absorbed much more by the emptiness – by what is only suggested yet is not actually there.
Born in 1943, Nigel Hall is among Britain’s most renowned contemporary artists. His works can be found in numerous international museums and private collections such as the Tate Gallery in London, the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the National Museum of Art in Osaka, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Musée National d‘Art Moderne in Paris.
In London, he has worked as an instructor at the Royal College of Art and head of the Sculpture Faculty at Chelsea College of Art and Design. In 2003 he was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Art, and in 2017 he received an honorary doctorate from London’s University of the Arts.
Justine Krämer