Now open in London, ‘Hughmanity’ marks Hugh Hayden’s (@huthhayden) first return to the city since his 2020 debut with…
Now open in London, ‘Hughmanity’ marks Hugh Hayden’s (@huthhayden) first return to the city since his 2020 debut with the gallery, which was abruptly closed just days after it opened due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Now staging his seventh show with Lisson Gallery, the Texan-born artist expands upon his ongoing investigation of congregation, passage and assimilation through the transformation of familiar cultural symbols into allegories of community, rupture, and belief. These new works, meticulously crafted from trees through a series of techniques like felling, milling, carving, and laminating, extend Hayden’s sculptural language, while the introduction of painted surfaces signals a significant new expanding element within his practice.
At the center of ‘Hughmanity’ is ‘The Last Supper’ (2025), a stretched table encircled by flames and rendered unreachable. Dining tables, he reminds us, are not only sites of joy and communion but also of fraught family gatherings, unspoken grief, or absence. The flames that rise from its surface also echo religious and art historical precedents, from Leonardo da Vinci’s composition of the same name to Ed Ruscha’s Burning Gas Station.
🗓️ On view until 1 November at 27 Bell Street, London
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