Four Quartets: Waddington Custot :: London

This summer, Waddington Custot presents work by France-based American painter Richard Höglund (b.1982, Sumter, South Carolina), who investigates what it means to paint. Each of his series of works is developed after a long process of research and contemplation, compounding ideas from the worlds of philosophy, architecture and literature, whilst also investigating the significance of traditional media, such as drawing and painting, and their fundamental artistic method.

The paintings selected for the exhibition are from Höglund's Four Quartets series, which are dense with historical references: from geometric principles of ancient Egypt to those of Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier; from Rembrandt to Reinhardt, who were celebrated for creating luminosity out of darkness within their paintings. The most direct reference made by these works is to the iconic Homage to the Square series by German-born artist and educator Josef Albers, from which the paintings take their compositional structure. "I am directly addressing Albers' work as an artist, but also as a teacher. In this moment of generative, "teachable" AI, what is copying, what is learning, and what is profoundly, inimitably human? What of subtlety, of the tiny shifts that create the rifts wherein nests the unprogrammable mystery of the creative spirit?"

In Höglund's series, combinations of three or four concentric squares are outlined in goldpoint, creating a framework into which dark pigments are pressed into a prepared ground. At first sight, the paintings appear almost black, however as the viewer moves around the work, each individual square emerges, defining itself from the others by the way light is absorbed or reflected within the surface. The ground of the painting is built up using indigo, basalt, marble and bone: materials selected for their optical properties and each imbued with symbolic meaning for the artist, as he explains: "I think of indigo as the deep, whether the cosmos or the sea. I think of bone dust as the eventuality of the body, and marble dust as the eventuality of what we make. Basalt is my rock of the North and is reminiscent of voyages I would undertake in a mad hunt for a lost Burkean sublime."

In some instances, indigo is combined with dioxazine, copper or iron to create an iridescent effect, causing the squares to glow outwards, hovering ahead of the painting surface. The squares sit in an inverted arrangement to those of Albers' paintings; they are no longer grounded, but appear to resist gravity, accentuating the transcendental quality in each work. Albers explored the interaction of colour in his paintings, which raised questions about perception that Höglund pursues in a study of light itself: "These paintings come alive in low, natural light as it changes by the hour and the season. They are perhaps at their best at dawn, or at twilight, when the eye needs time to adjust. A painting is not an image. A painting requires your presence, light and time; time for looking and for apparitions to come and go with your thoughts." The title of the series 'Four Quartets' refers to T.S Eliot's eponymous collection of four poems, of which one of the predominant motifs is time. Höglund's Four Quartets, rich with historical references, similarly contemplate ideas of time, beauty and eternity.