RICHARD HAMBLETON | SHADOWMAN
ON VIEW
July 1 - July 18, 2021
RECEPTION
Thursday, July 1, 4-7pm
LOCATION
66 Newtown Lane
East Hampton, NY
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Richard Hambleton (b. Vancouver, Canada 1952) was one of the most prominent and influential figures of the downtown New York art scene. After receiving his Bachelors of Fine Arts in painting and art history from the Emily Carr School of Art in 1974, Hambleton launched his “Mass Murder” series. The series was painted on the streets of over fifteen cities across Canada and the United States. Hambleton would outline friends in chalk drawings, splashing them with red paint to mimic the remnants of a crime scene.
In 1979, Hambleton moved permanently to the Lower East Side of New York. It was here that Hambleton gained notoriety for his "Shadowman" paintings of the early 1980s. Over the course of the next decade, his ominous silhouettes painted in unsuspecting corners, alleys, and side streets had appeared in over six hundred locations in major cities including New York City, London, Paris, as well as both sides of the Berlin Wall.
A departure from the spontaneity of the traditional street tag, Hambleton’s paintings were site-specific conceptual works intended to provoke unsuspecting pedestrians with a sobering moment of contemplation. His first solo exhibition opened in the Lower East Side of New York in 1982, and just two years later, his work was included in the Venice Biennale. He was included in the Venice Biennale again in 1988. From 2009-2011, a major retrospective was mounted in collaboration with Giorgio Armani, touring multiple venues that included the Moscow Museum of Modern Art and Phillips de Pury in New York. Hambleton's work has been included in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA PS1, and the Brooklyn Museum. Shadowman, a film about Hambleton by director Oren Jacoby, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 21, 2017. Hambleton continued to live and work in New York until his death in 2017.
Chase Contemporary is pleased to announce its first solo exhibition in its new East Hampton location, which will open over July 4th weekend. A selection of medium and large-scale canvas works by acclaimed Expressionist urban painter Richard Hambleton will be on display at 66 Newtown Lane in East Hampton, from July 1 through July 18, 2021. This installation of “Shadowmen” at Chase Contemporary will mark the first time a Hambleton show of this size has been presented on the East End. An opening reception will be held on July 1st from 4-7pm at 66 Newtown Lane.
Hailed as the “godfather of street art,” the Canadian-born Hambleton is recognized around the world for his daring, dark graffiti style which he displayed on walls of burnt out buildings, along the passages and streets of off-beat neighborhoods and other non-traditional settings. While his work is often compared with graffiti artists Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, it was his larger-than-life black “shadowmen” which began to appear around New York streets and first captured the attention of New York critics in the 1980s. The Shadowmen and his earlier, more controversial “mass murder” installations set him apart from his contemporaries.
In a 25-minute raw video of Hambleton discussing his work in 1983 at Civilian Warfare Gallery in NYC, the artist discusses his Marlboro (Horse & Rider) series and it’s presentation of American mythology. Here Hambleton is exploring Marlboro’s exploitation of this American hero, and his view of that image as a contemporary myth. One of Hambleton’s rodeo collage studies will be included in the exhibition.
Hambleton’s first solo exhibition opened in the Lower East Side of New York in 1982, and just two years later, his work was included in the Venice Biennale. He was included in the Venice Biennale again in 1988. From 2009-2011, a major retrospective was mounted in collaboration with Giorgio Armani, touring multiple venues that included the Moscow Museum of Modern Art and Phillips de Pury in New York. “Shadowman”, a film about Hambleton by director Oren Jacoby, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2017. Today, Hambleton’s works are held in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Moco Museum in Amsterdam, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others. Hambleton continued to live and work in New York until his death in 2017.
