James Hugonin

James Hugonin has produced 18 paintings over the past 22 years. This in itself is remarkable. More unusual still is the fact that these paintings are all part of the same series: all are of identical dimensions, all are produced in the same meticulous way and all share an abstract aesthetic. A retrospective of Hugonin’s work at the Ingleby Gallery presents us with the labours of just eight of those years.

In the downstairs gallery we see the first two paintings in the series, 'Untitled I' and 'II', whereas upstairs are his eight most recent works, 'Untitled XII' – 'XVIII'. Each painting is based around a rigorously constructed grid, marked out on a gesso surface with silverpoint. The several thousand small rectangles this grid creates are what Hugonin then paints in individual colours. These colours then combine, at a distance, to form a mass of scintillating shapes and wave forms, with the colours and shapes progressing and changing from one painting to the next.

Though Hugonin’s works may be redolent of the Optical Art of the 1960s or the works of Mondrian, he himself expresses greater debt to the Pointillism and neo-impressionism of George Seurat. A comparison or analogy with music is also possible, again encouraged by Hugonin’s own language: he refers to the detailed notebooks that he uses to construct the painting as a ‘score’, and describes his painting process as Morton Feldman did his music: "The right note at the right time in the right place."

Though there is the potential for this musical analogy to be better explored by an exhibition of this kind, the current retrospective remains undamaged. These quiet and reflective paintings strike a successful note in their own right.