Rad Husak: DUALITY
23.11.22 – 10.12.22
Quantus Gallery
11-29 Fashion Street
London
E1 6PX
Quantus Gallery and Grove Gallery announce an important solo exhibition by leading contemporary artist Rad Husak opening on 23 November 2022. Duality is a figurative and abstract study of the male form and represents a powerful process-based journey for this London-based artist.
Considered to be one of the ‘rising stars of the contemporary art scene’, Husak is one of the most highly sought-after printmaker-artists working in Britain today; it is said that there is simply no-one else doing what he does. Husak’s work was first debuted at Photo London 2019.
His work is highly theoretical, drawing on an array of references spanning notable academic concepts and visually referencing mid-century pop culture, Andy Warhol’s Double Elvis series (1963) in particular. The glitching figures are his form of commentary on ideas found in Queer Theory and gender studies.
The artist’s figurative works combine the aesthetics of the classical nude deriving from Grecian sculptures with elements of 20th century pop culture. Transforming aluminium panels through sand blasting to remove the outer metallic layers, Husak creates imperfections and blurred edges that amplify the tensions and movements, inner emotions and energies of the body.
Husak considers all elements of a project before creating the aesthetic of ‘highly controlled chaos’ that has come to define his work. He has developed his own technique of pigment transfer, pushing the medium of printmaking beyond conventional boundaries. His new panelled works bridge his passion for painting and print; colour takes centre stage in his most recent body of work – a significant transition from his previous monochrome oeuvre – utilising materials ranging from wood to painted aluminium, paper, collage and canvas.
He is inherently fascinated with the idea of capturing movement on a flat surface bringing order into a world that feels chaotic – to find beauty where there is ugliness.
Having long been seduced by the beauty and perfection of the Classical world, Husak presents us with a very modern muse: the lithe and youthful man – channelling the look and movement of a fashion model in a neo-romantic way. In the image, we see the glitch: the double exposure, the jolt and the jut; a digital imperfection, a stuttering. In Husak’s work, semi-transparent edges of bodies become less distinct as they melt together to simultaneously create corporeal and carnal strangeness – a space for the viewer’s imagination through implied movement and evidence of trace.
Husak opens the door to a personal reflection about the representation of self and beauty in times of mechanical reproduction and synthetic media in which we are all ‘read by machines’.
Through intensive research and personal experimentation, Husak has developed an original technique of pigment transfer on sandblasted. This process now underpins his forms, as he breaks through layers of metal, to partially reveal the reflective inner. Through this, he heightens what was utilitarian to create a sensation of something greater than oneself seeking to tease out the divine in order for us to see it.
In this way we can transcend ourselves through the creation of a moment of wonder and ‘revelation made manifest’ in materials. Whether expressed through figurative or abstract tonal imagery, Husak’s work is sensitive, seductive and multi-layered; highlighting the beauty of the male form and providing a perfect-imperfect platform for both redemption and meditation, clarity and mystery.
Learn more about Quantus Gallery
©2022 Rad Husak
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