About
FERREIRA PROJECTS is proud to present the first solo exhibition in London of Charlotte Hopkins Hall The Thinking Thing. Hopkins Hall's new body of work emerges from her desire to express an understanding of her surroundings along with her inner more elusive personal environment using the human figure as the backbone of her work.
According to Descarte, the mind was a 'thinking thing' that encompassed the fundamental nature of his being: his doubts, beliefs, hopes and thoughts. When reflecting on the essence of Charlotte Hopkins Hall's work, this fact, on its own seems, to be a relevant premise. Through the medium of painting, Hopkins Hall is searching for an understanding of her surroundings, with, in her view, all its confusing contradictions. Bacon, whose work she greatly admires, is the example of an artist who showed an excellent ability to divulge his own anguish, lifestyle and reflectiveness in the midst of the 1950's society which was recovering from post-war stress and uncertainty.
To some extent Hopkins Hall's work carries certain characteristics of 'conceptual art'. Because of her need for the idea to prevail over the painterly aspects of her paintings, she spends a considerable amount of time defining, researching and thinking before she can start producing anything. The very sober and often dominant black and white aesthetic of the pieces reflects her desire to develop a language for her discomfort in a world nestled between anger and nonsense, with which she feels little or no communion.
Hopkins Hall's concerns lie with various aspects of the human condition: the ridiculous and the unequal and hypocritical environment of our schizophrenic society, but also with the complexities within. As thinking individuals, one can observe in oneself polar characteristics and dualities, however slight. The absolute complexity of the psychological-self fascinates her.
Hopkins Hall's pieces are not entirely void of a profound desire to simply paint and research the aesthetic possibilities of a 2D surface. She plays very much with space and its impact on the figures and in turn the impact on the viewer. The interaction or non-interaction with the viewer is an essential element of how her work is received. Whether it is inclusive, exclusive or even intrusive. On the whole she does keep the viewer at a certain distance but enjoys using figures to create an atmosphere. In Untitled (3x3), the composition, inspired by Fra Angelico's Day of Judgement", in his way of painting rows of people, and whom incidentally often have similar facial traits, functions with the repetition in accentuating the uneasy and evasive nature of the painting. Whilst Hopkins Hall's work inspires and demands a passionate response in her, the reality of being an artist today imposes a burden of responsibility on her pursuit of artistic expression, not least because her predecessors have already struggled with these same issues and succeeded. Nevertheless, she aims to find a way to express her doubts, uncertain beliefs, disappointments, anger and hopes through the relentless pursuit of her reflections and the medium of painting.
