ALAN UGLOW | THE LIGHT BETWEEN THEN AND NOW
Press Release
Pablo's Birthday is pleased to present an exhibition of selected works by Alan Uglow. This will be only the second time the artist's work will have been seen in New York City, in almost two decades.
Alan Uglow (1941- 2011) was born in Luton, England, in 1941. Attending art schools in the U.K., beginning in his early teens, he continued on, receiving Honors in both painting and printmaking. He visited New York briefly, in 1968, moving to the city permanently, in 1969. With the exception of two, art-related, years spent living in Cologne, Germany, 1986 and 1992, he remained in New York until his death, in 2011.
Uglow made work some have called "timeless." This notion is as much a human in[ter]vention as time itself. All works of art are located within specific eras, so what one means by "timeless" is work that holds up, and doesn't lose one's interest, once the actual days of its making have passed. Uglow made experiential paradoxes, which remain fresh, regardless of repeated or sustained viewing. In a world of speed—of snapping, and snapping up, images—his work, without swagger or aggression, compels the viewer to slow down, putting his or her body in motion, as the painter had done while making the work.
Painting is, in general, a highly physical act. What Uglow had, which was unmistakably his, was touch, alongside a fine grasp of proportion and palette, intuition and determination. The stakes in a Uglow are high, the paintings alive with subtle tension; there are no overt signs of struggle. Their formats are straightforward—linear and clear—while their surfaces contain a sense of all-the-time-in-the-world pushing hard against moment-by-moment breaking points. Only if one stops to consider how relentlessly clear they are, might one see how many possibilities for error must have existed, in the course of their making. This visual disturbance—that paradox—stimulates a concurrent sense of calm and buzz, tranquility and urgency, a challenge for viewers to put their fingers on precisely what is happening to their retinas.
This artist might use upwards of forty layers of paint on a given surface, yet so deftly—one might also say defiantly—applied, those same surfaces never grow thick to the eye: a process analogous to holding a live wire in a gale-force wind. Each stroke of each layer is one of those "high stakes" moments. Areas where paint is "built up" are visible only in relation to those that have been taped off, becoming recessive; where the tape is applied, paint can bleed and must be resolved without evident stress. Art this economical must appear to have made itself, which these paintings do.
Uglow's work, in its melding of intention, skill, and intuition, its capture of light and space—its particular embodiment of sensation, eye, hand, and nerve—is able to be most fully apprehended when in a room with it, as it was meant to be seen. The work then provides an experience, in real time, of the possibilities to catch onto those visual-visceral puzzles, those serial epiphanies made by an artist who had been born during wartime, amid the dropping of bombs. The paintings are, in that way, a hopeful testament, an antidote to speed, to our frenetic, flat-screen world, a non-aggressive, playful hiatus, in which one might move around, taking time to really look: to appreciate the paradox.
Alan Uglow's work has been in numerous solo and group exhibitions, worldwide, most recently, in 2013, at David Zwirner Gallery, West 19th Street, in New York City. In early 2010, the work received solo exhibitions, at Museum Haus Esters, Krefeld, and Museum Wiesbaden, both in Germany. Later in 2010, he had a one-person show at Galerie Onrust, Amsterdam, NL; he attended Museum Haus Esters, in February, and, in November, the Onrust show. Other exhibitions, not long before those three, include CCNOA—Center for Contemporary Non-Objective Art, Brussels (2006), and in the Hague, the Gemeentemuseum, (2004). As recently as 2019-2020, Uglow was featured in a group show, for Le Consortium, Dijon, France, titled, "New York: The 1980s; Part II," along with Olivier Mosset, David Diao, Jessica Stockholder, Matthew McCaslin, Aimee Morgana and Michael Scott.
Starting in his early teens, Uglow attended Colchester School of Art, followed by Leicester College of Art. While at Leicester, he saw an exhibition titled, "The New American Painting," a show of American Abstract Expressionism, at Tate Gallery, London, (1959). He later commented, "[At seventeen], I wasn't sure I understood everything I was seeing, but I knew they would understand everything I was trying to do." Uglow went on to Central School, London, obtaining degrees in painting and in printmaking. His work was included in "Young Contemporaries," (London, 1960/64), "Bradford Spring Exhibition," (1963/64), Grabowski Gallery, (London, 1965), and "Contemporary British Painters," (Lyon, France, 1966). Several decades on, in 1995, Uglow had a one-person show at Gimpel Fils, London, curated by Simon Lee and Kay Gimpel.
Alan Uglow's work is in private and public collection internationally, including the Cincinnati Art Museum; Gemeentemuseum, the Hague; High Museum, Atlanta; Le Consortium, Dijon, France; Musée des Beaux-Arts, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland; Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld, Germany; Museum Wiesbaden, Wiesbaden, Germany; National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland; Sammlung Goetz, Munich, Germany; Sammlung Lafrenz, Hamburg, Germany; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, NL.