Surrealism Today

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Philippe Charles Jacquet: Les Reclus (27 April–19 May, 2019)

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Will you be in New York City in April? Then you can’t miss Philippe Charles Jacquet’s surrealistic landscapes.

Philippe Charles Jacquet is an architectural painter: his haunting surrealistic landscapes are an exercise in precision, layered variety, and esoterism

Opening Reception on 27 April, 2019, 6-8pm
RSVP Required: info@hugogalerie.com

Les Reclus is a solo exhibition featuring the carefully articulated dreamscapes of Philippe Charles Jacquet to be exhibited at the Hugo Galerie in New York City. The show introduces new pieces by the artist in his celebrated style in which he builds his watery worlds with various and highly planned painting techniques.

Les Reclus’ title is more relevant to his canvas’ structural capacity than their figural; while most canvases contain more than one figure, rarely does a canvas contain more than one structure. The reclusivity of Jacquet’s built environments, dramatically poised within surreal and stretching landscapes, lends his paintings an enigmatic quality. Adding to their mystery is the fact that they cannot be quickly dismissed as make-believe—they are too realistic, too aligned with our own experiences of stone houses, wooden rowboats, reflection pools, receding tides, and cloud-filled horizons. Even the slope of a figure’s slouching shoulders is too… personal.

Jacquet is an architectural painter; he plans his landscapes and their built environments with measured precision, constructing them in a layered variety of media and methods until they are as real as they are imagined. The materiality finessed, from mirror-like water to rust-scored wood grain, brings his painted compositions to life. The combination of textures, geometric accuracy, and concise colors creates an esotericism that includes viewers rather than excludes them; Jacquet’s solitary structures do not reject but envelop the viewer with the familiarity of a feeling. As if we’ve been here before. Perhaps in a dream.

Hugo Galerie is a fine art gallery in New York City specializing in contemporary figurative painting and sculpture. The gallery represents an international roster of artists working in a variety of media and range of genres.

Le Reclus, oil on board, 311⁄2″ x 311⁄2″ (80 x 80cm)
Le Port d’Attache, oil on board, 283⁄4” x 351⁄2” (73 x 90.2cm)
Une Soirée Ordinaire, oil on board, 471⁄4″ x 471⁄4″ (120 x 120cm)

See Jacquet’s previous feature in Surrealism Today from 2015.

Marjorie Darrow

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Gateway to the Subconscious

Artist Statement

The main theme of my work has always been the connection and synergy of all living organisms. It’s symbolic of the delicate balance and inter-dependency of life. I see these interconnections as a perfectly choreographed dance where each element is singular, yet part of the whole. It’s a simple and timely message, and my hope is that the viewer recognizes this in my artwork and takes with them a sensitivity and awareness of all life forms on the planet. My art is a process. The physical act of drawing or painting taps into my creativity, and there are always new discoveries and surprises. I view this process as a gateway to my subconscious because it’s not analytical. It’s completely intuitive. I typically begin with an initial inspiration, such as an ancient bristlecone pine tree, or an exotic orchid, or even the structure of a single cell. Sometimes this initial inspiration is representational, and at other times it may become abstracted, or so stylized as to appear surreal. From that point on I trust in the creative process to lead me. I start every painting with a detailed drawing. The act of drawing is where most of my creativity happens. It’s like a stream-of-conscious where each new element leads to another, and the connections between them evolve – sometimes with surprising results!

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Adel A. Nasr

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About Adel A. Nasr

Adel A. Nasr is an artist and an interior architect with a Bachelor’s degree (affiliated with the Sorbonne in Paris, France). His international travels had a great influence on his work. Adel has more than four decades of professional design experience worked for national and international architectural & design firms.

Adel has been selling his paintings for years at California art shows. His paintings can be found worldwide. He has his own artistic style influenced by Picasso, Dali, and Escher.

Being an interior architect for more than four decades has had a great influence on Adel’s paintings. Adel has transformed the interior design for many spaces throughout his career, creating extraordinary spaces that dissolve the lines between art, architecture, and interior design.

Adel currently lives in California.

Learn More

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saatchiart.com/adelartscape

Evan Lawrence

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Evan Lawrence creates strange and contemporary surreal art. Self-taught, Lawrence uses ambiguous symbolism to explore his transcendent visions. He is inspired by “the delusion of the beautiful things until the weird moments; represented by the emotional feeling of himself”.

Lawrence’s work is part reminiscence and part artifact of his own inner meditations. Reflecting on past experiences and encounters, the work raises questions of identity, meaning, and representation. Lawrence hopes his work ultimately contributes to a better world by acting as a mirror the viewers’ subconscious.

Artist Statement

“I see art personally as the bridge between conscious and subconscious, between what is real and not real. I express and balance my ego with it. Surrealism is like an escape room for me, a self-investigation of identity. I always try to infuse each piece of my work with my feelings, desires, moods, and dreams of the moment, using art as a basic language; transliterate the noetic perceptions into explicit views.”

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Buy Prints:

Open Edition: INPRNT – Evan Lawrence
Limited Prints: SPASIUM – Evan Lawrence
Signature Edition: CURIOOS – Evan Lawrence

The Art of Mark Hopkins

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Mark Hopkins Surrealism

The landscapes of Mark Hopkins are as gorgeous as they are mind-bending. Hopkins’ surrealistic techniques include playful visual distortion, juxtaposed symbols, and abstract surrealism in combination with a mastery of the craft of painting.

The first painting in the gallery above shows the Buddha hovering in the air in an archetypal temple. The scene is calm. Juxtaposed with this peaceful imagery is the ‘fallout shelter’ symbol on the tiles of the floor. The repetition of this symbol in an otherwise serene environment startles the viewer. It invites us into the work with Hopkins to reflect and process. Other symbols (which you’ll need to discover for yourself) further add the complexity, ambiguity, and depth of this image.

Hopkins’ gorgeous contemporary surrealistic paintings are both profound and ineffable.

Mark Hopkins Artist Statement

My paintings consist of elements assembled into stories or into ‘mood-scapes’. I place the recognizable into the supernatural as a way to invite a viewer to co-create a narrative from their understanding of what’s in a given composition. There is content, for sure. But it is flexible content or perhaps it is ‘content under construction’. Why? Perhaps it’s because I want more out of a work of art than straight representation can offer. My work adjusts to mood, current events, individual personalities, and to itself. It is possible come away with a different interpretation with each viewing. Bang for buck.

There are a few things I hope to say through the oeuvre of my work; That the Earth is precious, time is precious, life is precious, that our mind is amazing, that history is way more profound than we think, and that there are mysteries lurking which can provide insights into who we are, why we are here, and how ‘it’ all works. Graham Hancock calls us a people who have forgotten our past. My paintings both acknowledge and challenge that: We are finding what we forgot – awakening and reconstructing our past – but we might want to hurry.

I hope my work pleases my audience. I hope they play with it, enjoy the quirks, the color, and find it satisfying.

hopkinesque.com