Hume for More

FANFAIR

THE CANDY HUES OF GARY HUME

He has been called the "painter of now"; at 38, Gary Hume is one of the original Y.B.A.'s (Young British Artists). Turner Prize finalist, 1999 U K. representative to the Venice Biennale, Goldsmiths College alumnus, Hume is part of the changing of the guard in the British art world as the youth become the Establishment.

This spring, New York's Matthew Marks Gallery exhibits a new series of Gary Hume's paintings, along with the artist's first sculptures—life-size painted bronze snowmen. Hume's paintings are absolute eye candy; his use of high-gloss enamel house paint makes for seductive surfaces that are slippery, lush, and as contemporary as it gets. The imagery is in constant motion—as though viscous, pouring itself back and forth from liquid to solid, abstract to figure.

"He's one of the few painters that's somehow able to develop a new language of painting," says dealer Matthew Marks. There is a paradoxical Warholian quality to the work; it's everything and nothing all at once—acquiring substance and depth by skating on the surface, peeling off the epithelial layer of pop culture and applying it not to canvas but to sheets of aluminum.

From the very start, Hume has not been afraid of making beautiful work. "It was a conscious decision," he says. "I didn't feel like I'd be very good at 'not beauty.' The world is so full of people excellent at offering up ugliness, whether it be some artist or the mugger down your street. And I just knew I was never going to be as eloquent as the mugger." Marks says, "For Gary Hume, 'beauty' is not a dirty word."

A. M. HOMES