‘Enlighten’
Ryan Hewett at Barnard GalleryBarnard Gallery is proud to present ‘Enlighten’ – an exhibition of recent paintings by Ryan Hewett. A year after ‘Genesis’ - his acclaimed debut solo show at the gallery - Hewett is back with a body of work echoing the brutal beauty of his earlier portraits, but displaying a greater fluidity that
accompanies his growing confidence in the medium.
These works are fewer but larger in scale and they are more intense in their interrogation of self and other. With his densely loaded palette knife, Hewett scrapes and moulds his forms, caressing, bruising and bleeding the canvas, swirling between the associations of figuration one usually makes with portraiture and the sheer expressive energy of mark-making.
As ‘Enlighten’, the title of the exhibition, suggests, Hewett’s unfolding trajectory has become increasingly spiritual, complex and paradoxical. For him, portraiture has never been about external likeness; it is about turning the inside out and the articulation of an emotional journey of self-exploration and discovery.
03 September - 14 October













