Vincent Hawkins

Featured in the off space, London artist Vincent Hawkins brings a cache of new works on paper to the gallery for Flying Suit, his first solo exhibition in Chicago. Persuading paper, pigment and gesture to perform risky formal maneuvers, his modestly scaled masculine “poems” are nothing short of masterful. In a recent interview, Hawkins said “I paint and draw with acrylic on canvas, cardboard and paper, and recently have begun making 3 dimensional pieces. I work in an improvisational way, never knowing from the outset how anything will turn out. At the moment I am pursuing a line of inquiry that goes against how I have set about working before. A little dissatisfied with way the canvas “frames” or “windows,” I am becoming more interested in the forms I produce as objects in their own right, bringing them into the immediate environment. It may be more a sculptor’s sensibility but I still see it as painting.”

Vincent Hawkins studied at the Maidstone College of Art in Kent in England. His recent exhibitions include Inshore Fishing, at the Rokeby Gallery in London; Layer Cake, Fabio Tiboni, Bologna; The Chameleon’s Eye at Centrum, Berlin; ATN Bushwick Open Studios, Brooklyn; Moveable Feast, Paris; Five Galerie 1/5, Toulon; A Sort Of Night Of The Mind, Herbert Reed Gallery; and Artary Gallery, Stuttgart. He was a finalist for the Jerwood Painting Prize in 2006. He lives and works in London.