Clive Hodgson's US Solo Debut at White Columns Explores Abstraction and Meaning

Clive Hodgson's first US solo exhibition at White Columns in New York runs from March 4 to April 19, 2014. In a conversation with artist Sherman Sam, Hodgson discusses his artistic evolution from figurative to abstract painting. He began with figurative works in the late 1980s, depicting scenes reminiscent of Dutch taverns or Dickensian characters, but later destroyed much of this work, feeling burdened by narrative. Influenced by the social climate under Margaret Thatcher and exhibitions by Julian Schnabel at Whitechapel and Gilbert and George at the Tate, he shifted to abstraction. His current practice explores patterns, spots, stripes, and ornamental motifs borrowed from Renaissance art, emphasizing lightness, dispersal, and a rejection of symbolic meaning. Hodgson describes his paintings as deliberately shoddy, confrontational, and skeptical, often reacting against his own work. He questions painting's contemporary relevance but sees his hand-crafted, unpredictable approach as a political reaction against certain art world currents. The artist's studio is in East London.