Barnaby Hosking: Owl

About

'Owl' is the second exhibition in the series 'Cabinets' which explores the working process of internationally renowned artists both emerging and established. 'Cabinets' is a unique series of exhibitions, which has as its overriding reference point, the Renaissance phenomenon 'The Cabinet of Curiosity', otherwise known as 'Wunderkammer'. The term was originally given to rooms displaying objects, antiquities, paintings and other eclectic ephemera from science and the arts and prefigures the birth of the Museum in Western art. Moreover these vitrines also left a spatial legacy credited with the development of Installation art.

The second exhibition presents the work of Barnaby Hosking whose work explores the territory between traditional disciplines and new media. Without fear of contradiction, his exhibitions combine video, painting on velvet and figurative sculpture, employed to explore aspects of process. Hosking's projects involve physical hardship and often arduous journeys to faraway destinations in search of his subject-matter. In this way, the artist is cast in the role of an explorer and cartographer of unknown territories, whose drive and curiosity are fuelled by the desire for solitude and slowness. Working in the midst of snowstorms in the Norwegian wastes, or painting in a forest at night using black velvet canvas underlines a lack of irony, confirming a desire for an artistic struggle long lost to contemporary art.

Previous exhibitions include the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, USA; The 2nd Moscow Biennial; 'Imagination Becomes Reality (Part V)' at the Goetz Collection, Munich; 'Northern Light' at The Rubell Family Collection in Miami and 'New Blood' at The Saatchi Gallery, London. He is represented by Max Wigram Gallery in London and Groeflin Maag Gallery in Zurich.

Each 'Cabinets' exhibition will consist of three substantial, purpose-built vitrines. The artist's interaction with these generates a project, which, we hope, will uncover new territories of research previously unseen in their work. Furthermore, the cabinets' highly specific format suggests a particular form of audience engagement and approach, thus altering and expanding the works' viewing conditions.

Accompanying the series will be a limited edition box set of printed matter, designed by 'Language of Form'. Pamphlets will accompany each show with a commissioned text written by Nicolas de Oliveira and Nicola Oxley, founding directors of the 'Museum of Installation' and co-authors of several seminal books on installation art.

The next exhibition in the series will be by Andrea Buttner.