Graham Hudson ‘Major Trauma’

After being for two years in New York City with a temporary space, it is now the time to move on and start a new adventure. Monitor is glad to announce a new permanent space in Lisbon in the heart of the historical quartier of Rato, opening with a solo show by the British artist Graham Hudson, his first in Portugal. Graham Hudson, who has been working with the gallery since 2007 has accepted the challenge to work in a space that is in a state of total change. The two gallery rooms, originally existing as a paper shop and being abandoned for about twenty years, need serious restoration – Hudson will work with the precarious condition of the space creating a site-specific project. Hudson’s practice is constrained by the psychological conditions of temporality, developing it in the form of sculptures, paintings and videos, which can change or fall over during projects. The space will be the adequate and elected set to create this installation, due to its state of constant mutation. The psychological dimension of Hudson’s work is transported into the space, as a playground for the construction of an artist’s self-identity and its possibilities as a political entity.

Deriving from his recent solo show in Rome at Monitor, the Lisbon exhibition will continue evoking the figure of Jane Fonda, whom the artist has been using as a reference through the medium of painting. According to the artist, the varying painterly technique aims to dovetail with Fonda’s chameleonic roles in her Hollywood period, as well as her life before and after that – as an actor, activist, workout guru, tycoon wife, Christian, now back to Hollywood star. Graham Hudson has taken each painting as an opportunity to adopt a style, replicating that of other artists, mimicking the actresses’ fluctuating role as an icon.

For Major Trauma, Hudson will exhibit mirrored diptychs inspired by Fonda’s workout book, reaching for a Rorschach test aesthetic. Besides the paintings, the exhibition will feature a series of new sculptural work, appropriating the modular, replicated and mirrored modus operandi of the paintings in them. These objects can be found throughout the gallery, suspended, on the floor, building up a dense psychological landscape of mediums, displayed throughout the rough space.

This large-scale site-specific installation will open Monitor’s program in Lisbon, attempting to start with a statement and staple exhibition that reveals the interests of having a new project-based space.

Monitor (press release)