Hales London and Hales New York will be open by appointment only starting Monday, 16 March.

Digital views of our current shows, Basil Beattie Cause & Effect and group exhibition The Moon Seemed Lost, are available to view online. If you would like to arrange a private visit to either of the exhibitions please email [email protected].

Magic realism is ‘a way of seeing in which there is space for the invisible forces that move the world: dreams, legends, myths, emotion, passion, history. All these forces find a place in the absurd, unexplainable aspects of magic realism, it is the capacity to see all the dimensions of reality.’ [1]
Isabel Allende

Hales is delighted to announce The Moon Seemed Lost, a group exhibition which draws upon elements of magic realism, focusing on expressions of human nature and uncanny interpretations of inner worlds. Through painting, drawing, sculpture and photography these seven artists – ruby onyinyechi amanze, Omar Ba, Anthony Cudahy, TM Davy, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Sarah Peters and Maja Ruznic – embrace and reimagine the figurative, creating mystic representations of life that combine body and psyche.  

The exhibition takes its title from a 1968 magic realist story, Daughters of the Moon, by Italo Calvino. Set in a parallel New York City, the moon is decaying so is captured and carried to earth by a mechanical crane. The narrative is based in a real place with real people who are experiencing and accepting the phenomenal.  

Exploring different realities, the works in this exhibition encompass the imaginary and the ancient; as well as mythology and religious fables – whilst being connected to eternal themes of personal, social and political experience. Presently, in a time of global uncertainty, The Moon Seemed Lost requires the viewer to suspend disbelief. Mesmerising and rendered otherworldly, the works serve as portals to other realms.  

The open-ended drawings of ruby onyinyechi amanze, depict a cultural hybridity and a futuristic dreamscape where a ‘post-colonial non-nationalism’ is the norm. Omar Ba creates a universe of intricate ornamentation and elaborate surrealistic vision, which is drawn from the beauty and history of Africa.  At once dark and luminous, Anthony Cudahy’s paintings originate from an archive of reference images, which in the process of making become scenes less specific to space and time, hinting more at the mythical and utopian. TM Davy’s intricate and evocative paintings are symbolically lit, emanating spirit and a phenomenal reality. Through Rotimi Fani-Kayode’s photographic works, he fused European art historical iconography, spiritual Yoruba tradition with erotic fantasy. Sarah Peters’ unsettling sculptures have a talismanic quality – her heads simultaneously evoke antique deities and modern androids. In Maja Ruznic’s ethereal paintings, she deftly weaves personal memory and her experience of trauma with mythology and healing, softening the darker subject matter in her work. 

The intimate, figurative portrayals in this exhibition have a psychological underpinning, both revealing and concealing an interior spirit. Charged with symbolism and conceptual metaphors, the works manifest the sacred, ancient and futuristic. Conflating historical and contemporaneous imagery; with the real and imagined, creates a timelessness to these works. This group of artists use elements of magic realism to reorient our perception, revealing the world anew. 

[1] Allende, Isabel. The Shaman and the Infidel (interview). New Perspectives Quarterly 8.1 (1991) p54