Songs of the Open Road opens at Halcyon Gallery’s flagship at 148 New Bond Street presenting works by seven major artists. Each work reflects a journey, with the show taking its title from Walt Whitman’s ode to exploration, Song of the Open Road.
The show aims to elucidate the technological innovations of the 19th century that enabled artists to travel far and wide, carrying portable equipment, and working en plein air. This artistic tradition is a focus of the exhibition, exploring a contemporary response to the practice and the journeys resulting from the artistic instinct to wander.
Halcyon Gallery proudly presents renowned artist and poet Robert Montgomery, the newest addition to its gallery program, with his work taking centre stage. The leading conceptual artist will showcase his signature light works, which have displayed his evocative poetry in public spaces and monumental landscapes around the world. In addition to these sculptures, Montgomery will exhibit canvases that combine poetry and landscapes, reflecting his Romantic sensibility and admiration for the likes of J.M.W. Turner and Caspar David Friedrich. His works are hung in dialogue with paintings by Bob Dylan, with both artists sharing an affinity for vast landscapes and a yearning to reconnect with nature.
Original paintings by Bob Dylan are displayed throughout the exhibition including canvases from his critically acclaimed series The Beaten Path and watercolours from a new body of work entitled Route 66. Dylan is world-renowned for producing some of the most memorable songs of all time, however, his visual artwork has been overlooked until recently. He began drawing and painting in the 60s but his works were rarely accessible to the public until his first exhibition in 2007. Since then, Dylan has been increasingly dedicated to his visual art, producing some of his most ambitious and accomplished work in recent years.
Contemporary British master, David Hockney and Spanish painter Pedro Paricio both explore and capture journeying in their work. Their methods are also shaped by the legacy of artists inspired by monumental landscapes. Paricio’s interpretation of Hockney’s paintings of Southern California inspired his recent Master Landscapers series and continues his dialogue with Britain’s most celebrated living artist. With Paricio’s characteristically colourful geometric designs, these paintings invite us to view the iconic landscapes of the Hollywood Hills and the Pacific Coast Highway afresh. Hockney’s vibrant and abstract Snails Space prints also feature, echoing his earlier panoramas of Mulholland Drive. For the first time, Paricio’s landscapes will hang alongside the Hockney works which inspired them: a meditation on the winding roads of California.
In celebration of the movement’s anniversary, digital artist Dominic Harris has created a new immersive installation: Blue Visions of an Iridescent Soul. Drawing inspiration from nature, the artist reveals the rippling blue scales of a butterfly’s wing which are only visible at a microscopic level. This dynamic work explores the unseen wonders of our environment on an immersive scale. The visuals within the space shift with the viewer’s perspective, paralleling the phenomenon of iridescence in nature. Here, Harris translates the ephemeral beauty of the natural world into the digital realm. Magnifying the intricate structure of a butterfly’s wing parallels the innovative brushstrokes of the Impressionist painters, who vividly captured the transient effects of light and movement.
The exhibition will also present a new work by Ernesto Cánovas, The Way to the Top, which brings together fragments of an otherworldly landscape, playing on the nostalgic imagery of a quintessential American road trip. Exploring the relationship between photography, history and collective memory, Cánovas works with a range of vintage sources, digitally manipulating images and transferring them onto wooden panels. The hazy, reworked quality of the images appears as a blurry memory or an ethereal dreamscape.
Songs of the Open Road – 1st September 2024 Halcyon Gallery 148 New Bond Street
