Patrick Hughes’s first solo exhibition was in 1961 in Mayfair, London. An introduction to the catalog was given by critic David Sylvester. Since then, he has had individual exhibitions in Los Angeles and San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, and New York, and in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland, one hundred and fifty-four to date.
Hughes did his first relief painting in reverence in 1964 and has greatly refined his system over the past fifty years, a system that is widely imitated. These works are built with wooden pyramids in perspective but upside down, with the furthest point of the represented space being the closest to the viewer. The resulting illusion is extraordinary, the viewer engages with the painting as it seems to move seamlessly, giving the impression of being in the room or outside of the depicted architecture.
The University of London awarded Patrick Hughes a Doctor of Science degree in 2014 for his contribution to the study of the psychology of perception. Hughes has studied and written throughout his career on visual and verbal logic, his book Paradoxymoron, Foolish Wisdom in Words and Pictures offers a masterful insight into his original way of thinking.
The Tate Gallery, the British Library, the British Academy, the Wurth Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Detroit Institute of Art, and many other institutions preserve Hughes’s art. Reflecting on the history of art and architecture, his witty and imaginative work is inspiring and revealing about our world and how we engage with it.
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05/10/2023 - 15/12/2023
The works in this exhibition awaken deep concern in those who contemplate them. A simple glimpse of any of them could challenge our perception. Are we seeing a moving object or are we faced with a tangible, static object? This is how fascinating the works of Patrick Hughes and Rafael Barrios appear, like an authentic game of illusions.