Gary Hume
Destroyed School Paintings

In the spring of 2020 the museum Dhondt-Dhaenens will present the first solo exhibition in Belgium of British artist Gary Hume (born 1962). Hume is linked to the YBA (Young British Artists), a group of conceptual artists that created a fuss in London in the early 1990s. Hume is known for his abstract paintings characteristically produced with industrial paint on aluminium relating as much to contemporary conflicts as to the vulnerability of human life. In his monumental paintings and sculptures, Hume often explores the hard-to-define boundaries between empathy, memory, beauty and violence.

The exhibition Destroyed School Paintings shows a new series of paintings stirred by recent conflicts in the Middle East. For two years, Hume collected photos from newspapers and magazines showing destroyed classrooms in these war zones. The remaining children’s drawings on the walls and blackboards are the origin of the Destroyed School Paintings series. They are Hume’s response to the often, sensational images of war violence. The paintings are combined with a few Ghost Sculptures, a group of monumental, anthropomorphic sculptures based on Hume’s famous Wonky Wheels.