Andrew Huston
Laguna Durante – Lockdown exhibition
Local: Galeria Beatrice Burati Anderson – Veneza
Data: Set-Dez/2020
Silence and otium have always been a source to artists, and creativity gets to start with humanity, which do not exclude any nuance of feelings. Goethe said “Talent is developed in privacy”. In the last century, which just closed to open the doors to the new Millennium, humanity has been exposed to an extraordinary revolution, chaotic and at the same time extremely prolific. The XXth Century presented us wars, pandemics and the conquest of the space.
In the first two decades of the new Century, we saw a major acceleration of technology, as well of communication, from the extreme exposure of our lives to the impossibility of verifying the reliability of the news transmitted by media. Art instead is always an expression of the Zeitgeist. It is the space where we can ask questions and be open to provocation and eventually be liberated. But in the moment in which history presents us such a destabilizing, unexpected issue such as a pandemic, art immediately comes to sustain our lives and imagination.
During this period in Venice, one of the main crossroads of cultures in the world, artist Andrew Huston worked in his studio contemplating the main changes of his city. As the artist himself said about his work before the pandemic: “Venice’s urban landscape is singular as it meets both horizontally and vertically within its surroundings.
Here traces of architecture and historical signs, through their permutations, reflect and float in the canals. Likewise the laguna also enters the work, there is no hierarchy of interests or things. Once in the page or on the canvas, color becomes a defining attribute to complete the emotional tone of the work.”
However, during the lockdown, he had the privilege of the city almost to himself, exploring with his camera and registering the emptiness, the shadows, the details and the perceivable vibrations of this new eerie condition. There you can find the same elements that you find in his pictorial works. While we are still living in a state between anxiety and expectations, this new body of work on view is presented as a reflection of the times.
Now that the world is quiet and masked, we are obliged to look at each other’s eyes to smile, to connect or to reconnect with ourselves. The universe silenced us for a while, so we could contemplate everything around us. Art has never been so important to help us to go on, especially in this uncertain phase and as Andrew Huston says about his photographs: “I am looking for a quiet banality, with some beauty”.
