Richard Artschwager / Gary Hume

Monika Sprüth and Philomene Magers are pleased to present a duo exhibition with works by Richard Artschwager and Gary Hume, marking the first time their work has been brought into dialogue. For this show—the first at the New York gallery for each artist—Hume selected his works in direct response to Artschwager’s. The work of both artists circles the same fundamental problem: what an object, or an image, becomes when its surface is the subject. Hume’s signature use of high-gloss household paint on aluminum carries light rather than depicts it, implicating the viewer and their surroundings into the image itself. Artschwager set out to make “paintings for the touch” and “sculptures for the eye,” constructing works from commercial materials and casting familiar domestic objects at distorted scales and unexpected configurations that deliberately blur the boundary between painting and sculpture. Where Hume’s paintings insist on their own surface, Artschwager’s objects insist on their own ambiguity; both complicate the act of seeing.