Richard Hamilton
Lobby
1985-87
oil
on canvas
175
x 250 cm
'Lobby'
is a painting by Richard Hamilton that shows the foyer of a hotel, with floors
covered with greenish carpet, a large vase of flowers in the forefront,
mirroring walls and a free-standing mirror-faced rectangular column in the
middle of the room; stairs leading upward.
The source for the painting was a postcard of a Hotel Europa in Berlin
that the painter received from a friend round 1974. The painting is fascinating
because it is very difficult to actually read the space. The space is empty,
however there is a person visible in the back of the scene, but only as a
suggested reflection of another space. The pictorial sense of the work being
very retinal and illusionary.
In 1993 to my surprise at visiting the Venice Biennal
exhibition of Hamilton in the British pavillion the painting appeared to be a
central object in an installation-like setting similar to the imaginary space
of the painting, thus in a hallucinatory way connecting painterly space to real
presence.
Ton Kraayeveld
Lobby
2014
oil
on canvas
70
x 50 cm
Laid-back designed interiors often appeared in my work
for a long time, often referring to historic spaces in Berlin or former Eastern
Germany. In 2014 working as artist-in-residence in Pilotenküche
in Leipzig I made my own version of 'Lobby',
based on the entrance room of a Berlin based Hotel Europa of which I
found photographs on the internet.
During a visit to China in 2018 I have spent one night
at a hotel in a village in the region of Fujian. The hotel entry appeared to
have remarkable similarities to the atmosphere and space in the works mentioned
above here.
'Chinese Lobby' is a recent work shown at my exhibition
‘Labyrinth’ at Gallery Helder (The Hague, NL, Nov. 2019), based on photographs
taken of this hotel lobby in Fujian.
Ton Kraayeveld, 2020
Ton Kraayeveld (NL)
Chinese
Lobby
2019
oil
on canvas
150
x 200 cm
rk
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