Hugh Mendes - Beyond the Grave
(with. Gordon Cheung, Annie Kevans)
Feb 8 - March 7, 2005

Hugh Mendes has been painting scraps of obituaries over the past few years, a process that began soon after the death of his own father. Obituaries condense a life into a few column inches and a single image – a scrap of newsprint that becomes a heavy token, a small part for the whole that ricochets somewhere in the eternity of our collective memory. Mendes creates something like an icon from these everyday events, a small, powerful painting that glows with concentrated melancholy and beauty.

Obituaries: Jack Wild, 2006. Oil on Linen 20 x 30 cm