Hagen – Hunt Slonem's paintings are real eye-catchers. Colors, motifs and shiny surfaces are his eye-catchers. For example, the mighty beaks of the toucans. They shine in yellow against a pink background. The orange collar accentuates the black bodies of the birds. Green dots are scattered throughout the painting between the recurring motifs: "Toucans New Species" (2021).
The US artist is being presented in Hagen's Osthaus Museum with around 50 works from the last four years. The exhibition "Fantasia" is a collaboration with the Serge Sorokko Gallery in San Francisco. Hunt Slonem, born in 1951 in Kittery (US state of Maine), has long been known in the States. His works are represented in over 100 museums worldwide and in numerous private collections. Slonem lives in a 15,000 square meter studio in Manhattan, New York. He mainly paints birds, rabbits and butterflies.
A rabbit figure is outlined with just a few lines. When Slonem goes into the studio, he starts his day with this finger exercise. The series "Bunny" (2016 - 2021) with numerous examples is hung in Hagen. A presentation video from New York shows the artist with his work. The small-format rabbit pictures cover an entire wall and are placed in several rows in front of it. Hunt Slonem can be described as an obsessive in the productive sense, working for up to 15 hours. A parrot often sits on his shoulders when he paints and listens to music. Perhaps there is some rhythm in the painting "Truck Rattern Teche" (2021). Parrots can be seen sitting on six perches, closely packed and facing each other in pairs. The birds in red, orange, yellow, green, blue and black cover the entire picture. A little of the background shimmers through in gold. The colors are applied in a pasty manner. The surface is loosened up with a scratching technique. Deeper layers of color appear. The physicality of color is interestingly varied. The rhythm of the recurring motif is enriched by details.
Hunt Slonem is a representative of American art that gained worldwide recognition in the 1960s. His all-over compositions have no main motif, no different elements. Rather, he works with homogeneous forms. In "Orient Express" (2018), it is butterflies that Slonem places with a light touch on meditatively dashed islands of color. The base areas are connected like honeycombs and are two-colored. With the shimmering butterflies above, a shimmering cosmos of color has been created that overwhelms you. Slonem's all-overs have no center of the picture, usually no spatial depth, but an exuberant desire for colors. In the painting "Totem Parents Annapolis Maryland" (2021), shimmering colors are brought to the canvas in large circular movements. The black-contoured rabbit figures lie above them like an amorphous structure.
In Hagen, Slonem is still showing brightly colored bird pictures such as "4 Trojans" and "Rio Bomba" (both 2022), which are presented in medium-format frames at flea markets. The portrait is also interesting for Slonem as a genre. Examples of his portraits of US President Abraham Lincoln and Queen Elizabeth can be seen in Hagen. Again, he uses his scratching technique, with which he runs through the pasty color.
