Salon Paintings

The first solo exhibition in the Nordic countries of paintings and drawings by acclaimed British artist Hurvin Anderson was shown at Kistefos Museum, The Twist. Salon Paintings surveyed Anderson’s celebrated Barbershop Series, from the earliest Barbershop paintings and related Studio Drawings he made in 2006, to new paintings that were on view for the first time, with which the series culminates.

Hurvin Anderson, born in 1965 in Birmingham to Jamaican parents, studied painting at Wimbledon School of Art and the Royal College of Art, from which he graduated in 1998. In 2002, he attended the Caribbean Contemporary Arts residency in Port of Spain, Trinidad. That residency had a significant impact on his work, inspiring an exploration of Caribbean postcolonial life that continues to inform Anderson’s paintings. Anderson has returned repeatedly to the subject of the barbershop as a culturally and socially charged space. Drawing from still life, photographs, and found images, he deconstructs the barbershop interior as an imaginative space in which he explores ideas and experiences of memory and national identities over time and distance. This body of work reveals Anderson’s restlessly experimental approach to painting as a process of critical inquiry. Among the recognitions he has garnered is a nomination for the Turner Prize in 2017.

Hurvin Anderson: Salon Paintings is part of a European tour in collaboration with The Hepworth Wakefield and Hastings Contemporary in the UK. The exhibition includes works from the Christen Sveaas Art Foundation and private collections, as well as some of the most political works within this series. Is it OK to be Black?, 2015, was a 70th Anniversary Commission for the British Arts Council Collection with New Art Exchange, Nottingham, and Thomas Dane Gallery, London. This work includes depictions of significant figures in the Civil Rights movement, such as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, whose ideas and legacy remain important in today’s society. The title responds to a misheard interpretation of the typical barbershop question, ‘Is it OK at the back?’ and highlights the underlying social context of the barbershop as a space for the black community.

Hurvin Anderson is considered one of the most captivating painters working in Britain today. His works manage to be both visually beautiful and poetically poignant, capturing moments of experience and asking questions about memory and identity through his unique process of image-making.