“I want everything in the picture [...] I want the transcendent singe of the unnamed, of the abstract, and the mist over gray seas, the white haze that unites sea and sky. I want the dark. I want the light. Painting, in a word. The whole catastrophe.”
The Bonnier Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Enthusiasm, a solo exhibition of new and recent works by American artist Richard Höglund on view from Tuesday, September 5, 2023 at Art Cake on 214 40th Street. The show brings together five years of conceptual groundwork and experimentation. Using traditional metal point drawing and oil painting techniques, Höglund explores approaches to painting throughout history, in this case synthesizing renaissance, baroque and modernist frames of reference. Höglund draws from both visual and literary historical references to explore his unique blend of abstraction and figuration. The surfaces of the paintings, underscored in gold and silver, become alchemic vessels for Höglund’s drawings, which continue to push and pull against the painting depending on the material. “It’s especially important for me to keep returning to these paintings as they evolve,” says Höglund, “the narrative persists, keeps creeping back in as the drawing resurfaces, as the oxidizing metal point makes its way up through the layers of paint.”
Born in 1982, Richard Höglund studied art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and semiology at MIT in Boston, USA. He holds a MFA (DNSEP, 2008) obtained at the Haute école des arts du Rhin, in Strasbourg, France. In 2013, Höglund was selected by Tacita Dean to participate in her workshop at the Fundación Botín in Santander. His paintings are considerations of History and Language. The Dallas Museum of Art recently acquired Höglund’s monumental painting, XIII STATION: MNEMOSYNON (History Painting VI: Via Crucis), for its permanent collection.
