Vicious 1994

Curator: This is Gary Hume's "Vicious" from 1994, executed with household gloss paint on aluminum. Its presence is quite striking. What's your first take? Editor: It feels...uneasy. Like a dream where familiar things are just slightly off. That beige figure surrounded by these almost cartoonish flowers...it’s unnerving. Like a silent scream in a garden. Curator: I find it compelling how Hume elevates everyday materials to high art. Gloss paint, typically used for domestic interiors, becomes the medium for exploring complex figuration. There's a democratization of the art object at play. Editor: That's fascinating, but for me, the materials heighten the disquiet. The slickness of the gloss paint flattens everything, making the flowers feel artificial and the figure strangely inhuman. It reminds me of old enamel signs. Curator: Right. Consider the labor involved in achieving such flatness. Each layer, each carefully delineated form, speaks to a conscious control over the material, challenging notions of gestural abstraction. And this interplay with pop art too, that I feel too, challenges the heroic stance often associated with painting. Editor: Heroic? I see vulnerability. The figure's lack of detail turns it into a void, a space for projection. And that sickly sweet floral background…it feels suffocating, a false paradise. Makes you think of the hidden anxieties beneath polished surfaces. I think I feel the title coming alive for me. Curator: Precisely! Hume confronts us with the contradictions inherent in beauty and representation. The repetitive floral motif, the industrial sheen of the paint…it’s about critiquing the consumable image, about revealing the artifice behind the facade. Editor: Yes, the "viciousness" isn't an overt aggression, but more like the insidious creep of anxiety, disguised in a seemingly innocuous surface. The way the flowers trap the faceless figure, leaving us unsettled. Curator: An excellent interpretation. I feel you got to the essence. The means of its construction mirror the disquiet we experience as viewers. Editor: That uneasy feeling definitely lingers, which, I guess, is what makes it stay with me. Something stuck, in the glossy flatness of it all.