Dean Hughes, Windowless work, 2013. wood, dyed calico and thread. 64 x 42 x 4.5 cm, 2013. Courtesy the artist and Maria Stenfors, London
Dean Hughes
24 January – 8 March 2014
at Maria Stenfors
London, UK
“the art of making knots, which is the peak of both mental abstraction and manual work, could be seen as the human characteristic par excellence, just as much and perhaps even more than language…” – Italo Calvino
In his first exhibition at Maria Stenfors, Dean Hughes introduces a new series comprised of hand dyed, stitched calico shapes composed upon identical wooden slats. Calico, being unbleached and not fully processed, absorbs colour easily into the threads of equal weft and warp. Once the fabric is saturated with dye, it does not return to its original flat and uniform appearance and shows the definition and contours of the lines of dots and dashes that constitute the fabric. The geometry is allowed to relax and demonstrate the nature of the material. The work does not focus on its physicality but what the material reveals.
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