Overview
Patrick reminds us of earlier works of his, a leaning sun, a grey rainbow, a being pursued by one's own shadow, in the domestic context of books and pictures. The walls follow us around the room.
Self-reference is one of the causes of paradox, like the notice which says, "Please Ignore this Notice". The reverspectives of Patrick Hughes refer to themselves because they are made in the way we see and then we see them. Feedback is caused.
Sometimes Hughes copies other artists, sometimes he even imitates himself. In Permanentspective Patrick reminds us of earlier works of his, a leaning sun, a grey rainbow, a being pursued by one's own shadow, in the domestic context of books and pictures. The walls follow us around the room.
Pablo Picasso told Francoise Gilot that, in Cubism, he and Georges Braque 'tried to get rid oftrompe l'oeilto find atrompe l'esprit. We didn't any longer want to fool the eye: we wanted to fool the mind.' Patrick Hughes' pictures fool the eye, you go right up to them and see they are the opposite to what you thought they were, and when you go back again they fool the mind, he is lucky that you do not remember to see with the eyes what your mind has just found out.
In his bookCubism, Neil Cox writes that 'writers on Cubism have offered three main explanations: that the Cubists were representing what the mind knows better than what the eye sees; that they were creating a pure medium of abstract form; and that they were making paintings about how paintings work.'
Patrick Hughes uses what he knows the mind knows when he represents the world in reverse perspective, knowing that the seer will see the pictures as going in where it sticks out and sticking out where it goes in. An example of this isHollow Victorieswhere he makes the Brillo box, books, suitcases, telephone box and building blocks hollow in an obtruding room, and we see them as the solid objects we know so well.
As to the creation of a 'pure realm of abstract form,' Hughes has been puzzled by the work of Rothko and Mondrian. InOn Your Markshe paints a Rothko show that goes on and on up three infinite corridors, and inAll-Out Mondrianhe goes further by painting 'Mondrians' all over the floor and the ceiling. I take it that Hughes is saying you can try to create pure abstract form, but the facts of human perception will still turn round and bite you in the bum.
Patrick reminds us of earlier works of his, a leaning sun, a grey rainbow, a being pursued by one's own shadow, in the domestic context of books and pictures. The walls follow us around the room.
