Details:
① Artwork:
Crossing
Richard Hull’s newest paintings and drawings are built of a faction of frenetic marks that coalesce into scenes featuring multiple figures. The narratives of these complex and abstract compositions are slippery and disorienting, at times inducing a sense of discombobulation or vertigo. Owing to a range of painting influences, from Max Beckmann to Philip Guston, Hull’s autonomous characters interact with the picture plane as if trying to stand up from it or burst forth.
Known early on for his paintings of abstract architectural interiors, Richard Hull eventually returned to the loose-limbed figuration that defined many Imagist artists of his generation. With a more romantic and painterly approach than his forebears, Hull’s repetitive gestures generate abstract heads, bulbous hairstyles, and, more recently, bodies and limbs. The artist imagines these abstract portraits as inner mirrors or containers in which his repetitive thinking and behaviors become visual.
Specs:
③ Artist:
Known early on for his paintings of abstract architectural interiors, Richard Hull joined Phyllis Kind, the primary gallery for many of Chicago’s legendary Imagist artists, during art school. More recently, Hull has returned to the loose-limbed figuration that was definitive of the Imagist era. With more romantic and painterly work than his forebears, Hull’s repetitive gestures generate abstract heads, bulbous hairstyles, and, increasingly, bodies and limbs. The artist imagines these abstract portraits as inner mirrors or containers in which his repetitive thinking and behaviors become visual.
Richard Hull was born in 1955 in Oklahoma City, OK, and lives in Chicago, IL. He earned his BA from Kansas City Art Institute in Kansas City, MO (1977) and an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (1979).
Hull has mounted solo exhibitions at Western Exhibitions in Chicago, IL (2023, 2018); Bruno David Gallery in St. Louis, MO (2020); the Merwin and Wakely Galleries at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, IL (2016); and others.
His work has been featured in group exhibitions at Western Exhibitions in Chicago, IL (2023); the Rockford Art Museum in Rockford, IL (2022); the Elmhurst Art Museum in Elmhurst, IL (2019); the Lubeznik Center for the Arts in Michigan City, IN (2019); the Minneapolis Institute of Art in Minneapolis, MN (2018); The Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art in Portland, ME (2017); and elsewhere.
Hull’s work has been mentioned in publications such as Hyperallergic (2023, 2019, 2018), The Chicago Tribune (2015), Time Out Chicago (2012), BOMB (2011), and Flavorpill (2010).
Richard Hull’s newest paintings and drawings are built of a faction of frenetic marks that coalesce into scenes featuring multiple figures. The narratives of these complex and abstract compositions are slippery and disorienting, at times inducing a sense of discombobulation or vertigo. Owing to a range of painting influences, from Max Beckmann to Philip Guston, Hull’s autonomous characters interact with the picture plane as if trying to stand up from it or burst forth.More
- Unframed
- Signed on verso
