Russ Warren: FACES + David Hawkins: New Works

Les Yeux du Monde is pleased to present two new exhibitions, Russ Warren: FACES, and David Hawkins: New Works, which will open Friday, March 28th and run through Sunday, May 4th.

Russ Warren: FACES

In his upcoming exhibition, Russ Warren presents a body of new oil pastel portraits on paper, about which he writes:

“The rectangle, an arena tour de force, is forever an unmovable jigsaw puzzle. Positioned vertically, it has the invading presence of a human being, an attempt at memorializing the space. Every move you make changes the psychological drama. One subject per picture is drama, more is milktoast!

DeKooning had his students draw a single apple for a week, over and over again to capture the “essence.” It’s similar to painting portraits with intense rapidity.

I studied medieval portraiture when I was young. The color, form, and line are locked in space forever. It’s like a tightwire, one shake and it’s suicide, this line or that. Check out the figures by Simone Martini and his masterful handling of line, shape, color, and form, regardless of scale. Sure, Martini influenced me, so did Vermeer, Piero, and Bosch. Bellini comes in first, his color capped edges to die for.”

Warren’s emotive portraits offer a window into the psyche of his subjects and, while drawing on influences he thoughtfully engages with, develop a visual language that is distinctly his own.

Russ Warren received his BFA in 1973 from the University of New Mexico, his MFA in 1977 from the University of Texas in San Antonio, and taught painting and printmaking at Davidson College from 1978 – 2008. Warren has exhibited work in such prestigious exhibitions as the Venice Biennale and the Whitney Biennial, as well as at the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Mint Museum, SECCA, and the Hickory Museum of Art. His work is included in numerous important public and private collections, including that of the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Mint Museum, the Gibbes in Charleston, the Virginia Museum of Art and the North Carolina Museum of Art. Warren’s work has been reviewed in important publications including The New York Times, Arts Magazine, and Art in America, and by critics including Roberta Smith, Carter Ratcliff, Barry Schwabsky, and Donald Kuspit.

David Hawkins: New Works

In New Works, David Hawkins presents recent pieces across mediums including mixed media works on paper, monochromatic monotypes, and oil paintings on linen and canvas panels.

Once the Color of Fire is a body of luminous mixed media works on torn paper with atmospheric, layered  applications of ground, oil, pigment, and graphite, which draw technical inspiration from Turner’s late watercolors and Albert Pinkham Ryder’s body of “sea paintings.” Their title nods to Jorge Luis Borges’ short story, The Circular Ruins, which questions the nature of reality, time, and boundaries between dream and existence as it follows a mysterious man who arrives at an ancient temple with the goal of dreaming a human into being.

NO ONE saw him disembark in the unanimous night […] to the circular enclosure crowned by a stone tiger or horse, which once was the colour of fire and now was that of ashes. The circle was a temple, long ago devoured by fire, which the malarial jungle had profaned and whose god no longer received the homage of men. 

Also in New Works, Hawkins’ latest monotypes push the boundaries of a medium he is well known for, embracing striking contrasts and balancing controlled gestures with organic abstraction. His Snow Paintings, a series of five small works on canvas panel, explore the shifting nature of perception in winter landscapes, and move beyond the impulse to depict snow’s stillness and flattening visual impact, instead layering ultramarine and cobalt blues to convey depth and movement. Select Soma Plants from Count Westwest’s Garden, a large-scale oil on linen work, imagines the garden as a space of both curation and wild entropy, inspired by Borges’ conception of gardens as metaphorical spaces and labyrinthine metaphors, symbolizing the infinite and the fluidity of time through the coexistence of order, chaos, and unruly growth.

David Hawkins received his BA from Middlebury College, his MFA from The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and studied at Slade School of Fine Art, New Orleans Academy of Fine Art, and the University of Virginia. He has exhibited paintings and prints nationally and internationally, and his works are held in public and private collections including the University of Louisville, the Emily Couric Cancer Center at the University of Virginia, Dominion Energy, Capital One, and Boar’s Head Resort.