Ania Hobson’s portraits of women of all ages, captured in moments of day-to-working day daily life, stand perhaps in distinction to Barbara Kruger’s resounding knell of mortality. Nonetheless this dialogue, involving Hobson’s new entire body of operate and the singular Kruger exhibited, reminds us that loss of life, love and concern exist experientially in day-to-day moments, not as abstract principles. Quotidian daily life overpowers symbolism, as a result of the elevation of tranquil human steps and moments. The get the job done is remaining demonstrated together now at Morgan Offers in NYC.
Hobson’s operate is worried with the pressure among her subject’s inside everyday living and their existence in a populated area. In contrast, Kruger’s preoccupation remains famously with the instances of the earth that we inhabit, and how exterior influences this sort of as promotion and commerce, influence and even form the reality of the specific. Hobson’s women can be recognized as a stand-in for Kruger’s viewer, not able to escape the social situations of the environment all-around them.
Formally, Hobson’s paintings relate to that of celebrated British artist Lucian Freud. Equally artists share a worry with the tactile nature of paint and the impasto remaining guiding from the going brushstroke. In distinction to Freud, nonetheless, Hobson’s portraits do not meditate on the unvarnished or borderline grotesque components of flesh, somewhat celebrating the individuality of each of her female topics through their self-expression.
This exhibition, as probably any juxtaposition, is involved with times of confrontation—occasionally overt, but for the most element implicit. The rigidity between our unique, autonomous constitution, and our always social nature: the outcomes that our expressions have on the environment about us, and in flip on shaping other folks.