Nicholas Hatfull Ed Ecco a Voi . . .

7 Jul-1 Aug 2020

Overview

Josh Lilley is pleased to present Ed Ecco a Voi . . . , British painter Nicholas Hatfull’s third solo exhibition at the gallery. Nicholas Hatfull is a champion and a pusher of the painting medium. He performs at the canvas with both the precision of a guild artisan and the pert, experimental play of the absurdist. It is an offbeat form of devotion with a heavy poetic yield, like a jeweller cleaning silver with ash. Hatfull can zoom across the canvas without breaking character, toughening the brushstroke into a slick vector. He can wipe it all back, too; he’s not precious. Airbrush and speckling make the hand disappear. Tissue paper might serve as blotting paper, toning an area down, only to be re-employed as a monoprint stamp, dampening matters elsewhere. Painterly effects are so abundant, in fact, that they don’t fight for the viewer’s affection — the innate technical flash of the artist’s toolbox is never the point.