Jim Kempner Fine Art is pleased to announce Charlie Hewitt: New Paintings, Sculpture & Ceramics, the artist’s ninth solo show with the gallery. The exhibition spanning two floors will open Thursday, September 15th and continue through Saturday, October 29th, 2016. An opening reception for the artist will be held on Thursday, September 15th from 6-8 pm. A digital catalog will accompany the exhibition.
Charlie Hewitt does not limit his art making, choosing to work with a variety of media to encourage new discoveries and fuel the production of ideas. In this exhibition, Hewitt explores five artistic mediums: painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, and ceramics. The new paintings focus less on brushwork and are made using an array of tools, such as sponges, paint scrapers, china bristle brushes and extruders. Hewitt begins by collaging prints and paper to canvas. From this groundwork, he continues to develop his imagery with the inclusion of automatic drawing. The subtext of drawing and its ability to facilitate feeling in painting is Hewitt’s most salient intention. The significance of his imagery comes from un-thought, automatic processes, drawing inspiration from the simplest sketches and doodles. The vigor and intensity of Sparrow’s Point exemplifies his process-based technique, where drawing and line dominate the kinetically nuanced surface.
Hewitt’s proclivity for lineation is present also in his sculpture. He views the creation of these lyrical structures as a form of dimensional drawing. Having a background in painting, Hewitt later taught himself to sculpt after working as a contractor and seeing the experimental potential of industrial materials. Normally freestanding, Hewitt’s recent sculptures are wall-mounted. The nature of relief lends itself to the exploitation of the beauty of shadow, a particularity in Hewitt’s wall sculptures. This treatment of space can be seen in Irish Gardener, a wall relief whose shapes and contours lean away from the wall and contort into the viewer’s space.
Hewitt’s interest in sculpture led him to explore ceramics, which he views as a bridge between painting and sculpture. Hewitt enjoys the challenge of having to surrender control to the constraints of a new medium. After taking a five-year hiatus from ceramics, he threw himself into this new body of work with a determination to embrace and expand upon an ancient practice. Hewitt views the rough surface and texture of these plates as another challenge to facilitate his drawing and painting methods.
Charlie Hewitt’s recent solo exhibitions include a retrospective of his paintings, sculpture and works on paper at the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, Maine and a retrospective of his prints at the Bates College Museum in Lewiston, Maine. Hewitt's work is in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Museum of Modern Art, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; New York Public Library, NY; Brooklyn Museum, NY; Library of Congress, D.C.; Portland Museum of Art, ME; and many others.
The artist lives and works in Portland, Maine and Jersey City, New Jersey.
