I first wrote about Tim Hawkinson’s extraordinary, usually giant mechanical sculptures constructed from on a regular basis supplies, akin to soda cans, feathers, rubber tubing, and typewriters, in 2017. After I acquired a press launch asserting an exhibition of work, I needed to double-check to verify this was the identical artist. As soon as I discovered that the sculptor was exhibiting work, I knew I needed to go and see Tim Hawkinson: Cupboard Footage at Miles McEnery Gallery, a physique of labor that’s new and sudden, a continent of discrete domains that appears to have risen out of the ocean in a single day.
My first shock upon seeing the work was their scale. All extremely detailed works carried out in oil on panel, none are bigger than 13 inches excessive or vast. The pictures are sourced from the artist’s life. He recorded mundane and private scenes on his iPhone, as in “Mom at Sutter’s Fort” (2014–21), which depicts a lady whose face we can not see strolling right into a wood-planked room with a inexperienced bench. Her pose as she strikes from one naked room into one other, sporting a darkish coat and pants, means that she is crossing a threshold. Hawkinson’s work come throughout as mysterious and, on this regard, share little with different photo-based painters, akin to Robert Bechtle, Richard Estes, or Chuck Shut, all of whom labored on a big scale.
Tim Hawkinson, “Mom at Sutter’s Fort” (2014–21), oil on panel
Hawkinson’s work can simply pull you in. The odd turns into otherworldly in perplexing methods. The main points and shade gradations in these small items based mostly on iPhone pictures are astonishing, as within the grey floor of the automotive seats and head rests in “Hansa Yellow College Tour” (2025), which exhibits his college-bound daughter asleep within the again seat, her head positioned within the heart of the portray. In “Onsala” (2022), Hawkinson depicts his daughter resting on two boulders simply offshore in Sweden, asleep. Together with her arms folded throughout her chest, she jogs my memory of the Vikings.
Hawkinson’s love of perfected particulars and easy surfaces aligns him with Northern Renaissance artists akin to Hans Holbein. Like Holbein, Hawkinson doesn’t idealize his topics. In “Wake” (2022), a forefinger extending in from the portray’s proper edge touches the that of an unshaven man mendacity in mattress towards a black background. The 2 fingers assembly brings to thoughts Michelangelo’s fresco, “The Creation of Adam,” on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, however in its realism the portray is nearer to Holbein. In “The Creation of Adam,” God doesn’t fairly contact Adam’s finger.
Tim Hawkinson, “Onsala” (2022), oil on panel
It’s laborious to imagine that Hawkinson sought out loaded photographs. Moderately, I imagine he discovered his resonant footage scrolling by the innumerable ones he took and selecting those who spoke to him personally. These works transcend the literal with out changing into overtly symbolic; that is the tight rope he walks. There’s a spiritual aspect to his work that emerges even in secular scenes, akin to “Flagellation Post” (2022), which exhibits a painted yellow metal submit wrapped in chains.
Whereas photorealism appears like a historic interval of latest artwork, principally restricted to the Sixties and ’70s, Hawkinson has reworked it into one thing very completely different. He conjures an consciousness of time passing, and of his sitters’ inside lives. The work will not be about appearances, however about depths at which the pictures solely trace. “Dad/Plane” and “Clare/Plane” (each 2021) painting members of the family on flights through the top of the COVID-19 pandemic, when no vaccine was obtainable. The attention of mortality is palpable. That’s one thing we don’t discover within the celebrated photorealists of an earlier period.
Tim Hawkinson, “Flagellation Post” (2022), oil on panel
Tim Hawkinson, “Wake” (2022), oil on panel
Tim Hawkinson, “Dad/Plane” (2021), oil on panel
Tim Hawkinson: Cupboard Footage continues at Miles McEnery Gallery (520 West twenty first Avenue, Chelsea, Manhattan) by June 21. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
