Hurvin Anderson (b. 1965)
Poster Girls II
acrylic and graphite on paper
13¾ x 8¼in. (34.8 x 21.1cm.)
Executed in 2005

Provenance:
Thomas Dane, London.
Private Collection.

Exhibited:
London, Thomas Dane, Hurvin Anderson: New Paintings, 2005 (illustrated in colour, unpaged).

λ Please see our Conditions of Sale for definitions of cataloguing symbols.

Specialist Notes:

Executed in 2005, Hurvin Anderson’s Poster Girls II is part of a discrete series of works on paper the artist conceived alongside his paintings from the same year, including his celebrated Welcome series. Inspired by his artist’s residency in Trinidad in 2002, the series explores on a visual and formal level the security grilles prevalent on the West Indies island. The artist has explained that for him the grilles act both as a symbol of life in Trinidad as well as a decorative motif that encourages a more formal reading of the picture plane.

In many of his works from the series, the grilles at once reveal and conceal domestic interiors adorned by ephemera, including poster girls like the present work. These compositional devices have become a meditation for the artist in their own right, as Anderson used these works to rehearse alternative views and readings. In so doing, the Poster Girls became distinct works: formed around grids, the poster girls oscillate between figuration and abstraction as the horizontal, diagonal and vertical lines of the monochromatic grid obfuscate the figurative image behind, impelling the viewer to read the formal qualities of the picture’s surface. The fragmented qualities inherent in the work, not only encourage various readings of the work but also echo the artist’s working method of reworking photographic sources through a process of photocopying, collage, drawing and painting to produce an array of fragmented visual elements based on the same image.

Poster Girls II is one of our sale specialist, Amanda Lo Iacono’s, sale highlights. Read more about this and her other picks here.

-