Metafigurative. Pictorial narratives of Hugh Fleetwood

About

Natural landscapes that come alive from nothing. Forests and meadows as simple backgrounds of a mysterious presence of humans.Persons who become characters,with fixed glancesthat draw trajectoriesin the void. They look at each other; they interact remaining alone, reaffirming their identity, their lean and essential humanity. They look like to be in a sort of presence-absence, like a deaf cry, in a state of simplicity that becomes complex but only to return simple.

Animals, and trees and leaves and flowers, that become symbols. An essential composition that is sublime and perfect in its way.

There is an almost Flemish atmosphere in the "visual narratives" of Fleetwood, which involuntarily emerges, and it surprises us.His worldis now real, now, suddenly, without any reference to reality, but only connected with our memories.

Fleetwood takes us into a suspended world; not a meditative world but only one made by pure admiration. His is not a hedonistic game; it does not chase the nice fairytale and gothic caricatures, nor the contemporary glitter of "skulls and diamonds”.

His atmospheres offer a classic style and stories of beauty suspended between life and death, between reality and dream.

It is precisely in this dimension that the "figurative" is moving towards a "meta-representation". But without cognitivism, without numbers and without calculation, only with the lightness of poetry, of figures that, just as well as words, make up a simple and touching poem. It is precisely in this poetic gesture that Fleetwood builds his pictorial world, where he entertains himself and he quietly spends the time of his life.

With this suggestive retrospective, Fleetwoodseems to invite us to take a walk, without haste, in his delightpictorial garden.