Opening Reception for JEREMY HOUGHTON: OVER THE POND
JEREMY HOUGHTON: OVER THE POND 08.06.21 – 09.01.21
OPENING RECEPTION Saturday, August 7th, 2021 5 -7 pm
KW Contemporary Art presents OVER THE POND, a solo exhibition of the work of Jeremy Houghton. Jeremy Houghton favors themes of space and light to capture the stillness amid movement. The subjects that characterize these scenes are illuminated by his focus on the spaces in which bodies linger, shimmer, move and often take flight. Over the last twenty years he has been invited to detail the life of a number of high-profile communities, from those at Windsor Castle and Highgrove to 2017’s Wimbledon championships, and the competitors at the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics. With each of these projects Houghton is interested in getting beyond public perception, documenting instead the everyday scenes that characterize an event or place. Although Houghton’s focus ranges quite widely, his technique remains a constant. Emphasis on painted shapes of light and space, (or unpainted paper with his watercolors), contrasting against areas of liquid color enables his subjects to glimmer in the liminal territory between figuration and abstraction. With extraneous detail removed, the paintings are hard to place, giving them an ahistorical quality that serves to underline their fluidity. Houghton continually explores the potential of negative space to represent light, and often references ‘ma’, the concept in Japanese aesthetics that translates roughly as ‘gap’ or ‘pause’, and which in traditional practice helps balance the relationship between different areas of an image. This focus on the space between things lends his paintings, even when they are of something as solid as a horse or a racing boat, a surprising delicacy. Houghton holds his subjects on a very thin, almost invisible line between motion and the ability to transcend time.
