All He Knows by Gary Stewart Hume
2000
Gary Stewart HumeFacts
- Material
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Set of 5
Varnish on aluminium - Size
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253.8 x 162.5 cm
- Description
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Hume's door paintings have become something of a trademark, and he has produced many versions over the last 25 years. A simple idea, yet so effective and beautiful. For us he created five enamel painted aluminium panels.The panels are larger than life-size painted renditions of hospital doors done in shiny layers of paint. But why doors? Hume has said that hospital doors are "doors of perception, doors of your birth; the very first and possibly the last things you see before you die. They have a blankness that demands you invest them with some meaning."
© 2014 Gary Hume
Hospital doors are doors of perception, doors of your birth; the very first and possibly the last things you see before you die. They have a blankness that demands you invest them with some meaning.
Artists have often used doors and windows as precise metaphors. Think of Matisse's painting of a window that led into a black void. Hume's doors are a little more playful – hovering between figuration and abstraction, but they will always make you think. As one critic put it: "there is dumb poetry in the image of the shut door."
