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18 October–16 November 2024
Crane Kalman Gallery Ltd
178 Brompton Road, London sw3 1hq +44 (0)20 7584 7566 www.cranekalman.com / info@cranekalman.com
Jonathan Huxley, Acme Studios, Deptford, London, April 2024
mixed media on canvas, 130 140cm signed and dated on the reverse
1. Gold Rush , 2024
After Movement
In almost every society and culture people have made signs and symbols that stand for human beings. These may be given a specific context – whether it is a hunting scene or a factory emptying out its workers. Sometimes, however, the human-sign is simply suspended against a background.
Jonathan Huxley’s work is both archaic and contemporary. Contemporary urban life is the context in which his figures are suspended. There are three distinct strands of work in this exhibition. First, the largely black and white paintings which are based on media and photographic sources. In many cases these show edgy or violent scenes. Second, works on paper that are drawn in flowing line and which use intense but highly original colour combinations.
Finally, there are works from the Worldview Series that have become known as Huxley’s ‘figurescapes’.
Although image-making is an ancient practice it has played little role in human evolution.
Rather we can make and use pictures and symbols because we evolved to do other things, such as: deal with our surroundings, work materials, and use gestures and language. In ordinary life these adaptations are so many survival skills, but in the life of the mind (and in art) they take on other characteristics. They become combinable and mutable in various impractical, unrealistic and sometimes fantastic ways.
Take as an example one of Jonathan Huxley’s figurescapes. An imaginary plane is suggested by equally imaginary groups of figures or figuresigns. Almost all the customary elements of a scene or landscape have been left out. Yet it is still a scene. It has a scope and a scale, it shows an event of some kind – a gathering.
Across all the arts manual performance forms a vital bridge between the artist and audience. In Jonathan Huxley’s work you can see him flicking, smearing and smudging paint and drawing media. The speed and direction of these gestures create an analogue of movement,
change and instability. The paint will dry but the visual ambiguities never settle down.
There is a significant dose of anxiety in the artist’s take on urban life. It is true that much of the time we are surrounded by people we do not know and about whom we can only form assumptions based on the flimsiest of fleeting impressions. And, most of the time, nothing bad happens.
Fairly or unfairly the figurescapes have become Jonathan’s signature works. Emotionally they offer some respite from the thuggish demiworld of some of the black and white paintings and from the equally uneasy holiday world of the hyper-watercolours. In the figurescapes people lose some of the attributes of being people. They are still embodied, but more as energies, traces or, perhaps, memories. Their bodies and limbs that can still move and connect, and out of these clustering figures new spatial forms emerge: forms that are essentially social.
An art historian might suggest that the figurescapes can be seen as belonging to a
particular genre or category of art (this is almost always possible!) and they might see them as latter day resurrection images. (Pleasingly, I learn that the Latin word for resurrection is ‘anastasis’ – literally ‘after movement’. ‘After movement’ seems to capture quite a lot about painting, and quite a lot about Huxley’s work specifically).
Of course, resurrection is a crazy idea. But it is not crazy to wonder what it would be like for different generations of your family or scattered friends to be united or re-united – if only the strictures of time, place and fact were relaxed. And in art and imagination we can, if we want, relax those strictures.
So. As soon as you create a sign or symbol for a person it begs the question what does this figure exist in? A street, a bus, a city for sure. But we are also suspended in less tangible media such as love, fear, friendship and the succession of generations.
Robert Jan Van Beek
gouache on paper,
signed and dated on the reverse
2. Legionnaire , 2024
23 28.5cm
gouache on paper, 30 40cm signed and dated on the reverse
3. Domestic , 2024
gouache on paper, 19 28cm signed and dated on the reverse
0 8
4. Robe , 2024
signed and dated on the reverse
5. Fashion House , 2024 gouache on paper, 23 36 cm
Jonathan Huxley, Acme Studios, Deptford, London, April 2024
the reverse
6. Tutti Frutti , 2024 pastel on canvas, 130 140cm signed and dated on
mixed media on panel, 20
signed and dated on the reverse
7. Old Kent Road Ghost , 2022
25cm
Mother
mixed media on panel, 40 51 cm signed and dated on the reverse
8.
& Child , 2023
gouache on paper, 18 29cm signed and dated on the reverse
9. Don , 2024
10. Witness No. 2 , 2024
gouache on paper, 23 31 cm signed and dated on the reverse
gouache
signed and dated on the reverse
11. Klein , 2024
on paper, 16 20cm
and dated on the reverse
12. Mandala Blue (diptych) , 2024 mixed media on canvas, 2 80 90cm signed
gouache
signed and dated on the reverse
13. Park , 2024
on paper, 23 36cm
gouache
signed and dated on the reverse
14. Torera , 2024
on paper, 22 36cm
Jonathan Huxley, Acme Studios, Deptford, London, April 2024
gouache on paper, 25 27cm signed and dated on the reverse
15. Sutherland , 2024
16. Conversation Piece , 2024 gouache on paper, 26
signed and dated on the reverse
29cm
gouache
signed and dated on the reverse
17. Western , 2024
on paper, 19 33cm
Jonathan Huxley, Acme Studios, Deptford, London, April 2024
gouache on paper, 22 25 cm signed and dated on the reverse
18. Rose , 2024
gouache on paper, 19 42cm
signed and dated on the reverse
19. Coast , 2024
20. The Beautiful Game No. 1 , 2022 mixed media on panel, 28 36cm signed and dated on the reverse
reverse
21. The Beautiful Game No. 2 , 2024 mixed media on panel, 28 36cm signed and dated on the
gouache on paper, 23 39cm signed and dated on the reverse
22. Rudy, 2024
gouache on paper, 19 28cm signed and dated on the reverse
23. Line, 2024
Club
mixed media on panel, 30 61 cm signed and dated on the reverse
24.
(Danny) , 2022
mixed media on panel, 20
signed and dated on the reverse
25. Selfie , 2024
25cm
mixed media on panel, 21 25.5cm signed and dated on the reverse
26. Interior , 2022
Jonathan Huxley, Acme Studios, Deptford, London, April 2024
gouache on paper,
signed and dated on the reverse
27. Chavvie , 2024
23 30cm
Jonathan Huxley, Acme Studios, Deptford, London, April 2024
mixed media on panel, 23 30cm signed and dated on the reverse
28. Shovel , 2021
29. ‘Prospectors’ No. 1 , 2024
mixed media on panel, 20 25cm signed and dated on the reverse
Following pages:
30. The People , 2022
A collaboration with Stuart Cupit and Solarflare Studio London.
A fusion of art and technology, an ever-evolving, generative video piece, exploring emergent behaviours.
Jonathan Huxley
Born in 1965. Lives and works in London.
1986–1989 BA Honours Fine Art: Trent Polytechnic, Nottingham
1989–1992 Royal Academy Diploma Royal Academy of Arts, London
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
Jonathan Huxley, Crane Kalman Gallery, London, February–March 2001
Jonathan Huxley: New Work , Galerie Ariel Sibony, Place des Vosges, Paris, 2004
Jonathan Huxley; so far…, Crane Kalman Gallery, London, March–April 2005
Romance; New Works by Jonathan Huxley , Crane Kalman Gallery, London, September–October 2007
Small Change, Crane Kalman Gallery, London, April–May 2009
Jonathan Huxley , Galerie Olivier Waltman, Paris, July 2010
Absolute Zero , Waltman Ortega Fine Art, Miami FL USA, 2013
The Human Condition, Galerie Olivier Waltman, Paris, 2014
Wildlife; A Selection of New Paintings and Works on Paper , Crane Kalman Gallery, London, May 2015
Remix , Galerie Olivier Waltman, Paris , 2016
Jonathan Huxley – Pop Up! , Heskia Haus, Zurich, November 2017
A Manual for Strange Children , Galerie Olivier Waltman, Paris, France, 2017
A Boy’s Own Story , Galerie Olivier Waltman, Paris, France, 2018
Standard Issue , Galerie Olivier Waltman, London, 2018
Michaux’s Dream , (mobile installation) APT Studio, London, October–November 2019
Multiplex , Crane Kalman Gallery, London, October–November 2021
SMILE! , Galerie Olivier Waltman, Paris, 2022
JDHD (Jonathan David Huxley Disorder) , Crane Kalman Gallery, London, October–November 2024
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
Boys Own Story , Royal College of Art, London, 1990
Into the Nineties , Mall Gallery, London, 1990
The Royal Academy Schools , Final Year Show (Postgraduate), summer 1992
Young Masters , Crane (Kalman) Gallery, London, 1992
Nagoya City Art Museum, Japan, touring to Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto, 1995 (sponsored by the British Council)
Essence of Humour, Crane Kalman Gallery, London, 1996
Young Blood , Crane Kalman Gallery, London, 1997
Hayashibara Museum of Art, Okayama, Japan (an exhibition of the ultra-violet project Boys Own Stories ), 2004
Jerwood Drawing Prize , Jerwood Space, London, 2014
Drawing on Kiefer, Group Exhibition by RA Teaching Staff, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2015
GroCha (Together) , Koos Gallery, Tallinn, Estonia, November 2023
Encounters, Rencontres, Encounters, Begegnungen, Georges Rodenbach Hall, Hallen Belfort, Grote Markt, Bruges, Belgium, October–November 2024
COLLECTIONS & COMMISSIONS
Barclays Bank Plc, London
Channel 4 Building, London
Frankfurt Airport Sheraton Hotel, Germany
Goldman Sachs, London
Land Securities HQ, London
Leicester City Council
Lord Foster of Thames Bank (architect Norman Forster), London
Nottingham City Tech University
Paul Hastings LLP, London
Portland Estates, London
Singer & Friedlander, London
Swiss Embassy, Washington DC, USA
The Met Bar, Metropolitan Hotel, London (Commission Mural)
UBS Bank, London
PROJECTS & EVENTS
2006 Art Live , Live Art collaborative event with 500 plus students Institute of Education, London.
2007 The Big Draw , Launch, Somerset House, London.
2008 Deadly Pretty Things Big Draw , Wellcome Collection, London.
2015 onwards Artist educator, Royal Academy of Arts, London.
2016 Elected Member of the Royal Watercolour Society.
2017 Breakdown selected for the Jerwood Drawing Prize, Jerwood Space, London.
2018 Public intervention: 5m diameter figure circle/ Mandala in oil pastel on the ground outside front of the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London.
2019 Activists and Agents of Change. University College London. Commission to draw on UCL Quadrangle for a day.
Art for Allergy live charity event for Evelina Children’s Hospital: drawing a figure circle on an outdoor plinth, Rolls Royce, Goodwood, West Sussex.
2020 Winner of ING Discerning Eye Drawing Bursary online exhibition due to Covid-19.
Permanent display at Paul Hastings LLP, London.
‘LAUGH’ Lockdown COVID-19 charity collaboration with Crane Kalman Gallery and the Royal Brompton Hospital, London.
2021 Sky High residency and commission Paul Hastings LL P: installation of wall paintings 39th Floor 100 Bishopsgate.
2022–2023 Visiting Artists, Wetherby Prep School, London.
2023 Film by Nikolai Voelcker. ‘Getting Away With It’
Artwork photos:
© David Harrison
Black and white studio photos:
© Nikolai Voelcker
The People (pp45–5):
Courtesy Stuart Cupit, Solarflare Studio
Printing by Pureprint Group, Uxbridge
Designed by Matthew Wilson / mexington.co.uk
