Horses vs Humans: Welcome to Patrick H. Jones' Exhibition 'Target'
The horse as a motif has inspired thousands of artists over thousands of years, but what makes Patrick H. Jones' depictions - currently on display at Duarte Sequiera - standout? Art and culture editor Christina Donoghue reports.
The horse as a motif has inspired thousands of artists over thousands of years, but what makes Patrick H. Jones' depictions - currently on display at Duarte Sequiera - standout? Art and culture editor Christina Donoghue reports.
The horse as a motif has drawn thousands of artists over thousands of years; Franz Marc, George Stubbs and Pablo Picasso included. Heck, even an entire art movement sprouted from Marc's own horse studies titled Der Blaue Reiter, (The Blue Rider) in 1909, marking the beginning of German Expressionism and including artists like Wassily Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter and Marianne Werefkin. But what symbolism does this animal carry, if any at all? In Paul Jones’ 2011 research journal The Sociology of Architecture: Constructing Identities, the author is seen quoting Picasso: ‘This bull is a bull and this horse is a horse, it is not my idea to give this meaning. I make the painting for the painting, I paint the objects for what they are.’
Whether one of the 20th century’s great masters was trying to fool us or not (hardly a surprise), we all know symbolism underpinned much of his life’s artistic output, in particular Guernica, painted in 1937. Dominated by symbols of loss and the afterlife, Guernica is a hardline direct commentary on the horrors of the Spanish civil war, but what about the individual animals illustrated? Why those and not others? ‘These are animals. Massacred animals. That’s all as far as I’m concerned’, the artist famously remarked over his choice of bulls, horses and the like. Brushing this aside, any critic will tell you the bull and its pictorial companion, a dying horse, evokes strength at the same time as it evokes loss and tragedy, reminding us of the lost virility and conquered power. However, the reality of death, division and individual loss communicated via a painterly conjuring of the horse doesn’t just belong to Picasso, just ask contemporary artist Patrick H. Jones.
‘I feel like we all think we don’t get wrapped up in this idea of racing and competing to hit targets’, Jones tells me before taking a long pause, ‘but it’s true, we do. We are all victims of herd mentality, whether we want to admit it or not.' We are standing in the middle of the London-based artist’s newly opened exhibition Target at the Duarte Sequiera gallery in Braga, Portugal, surrounded by nine paintings of horses in total, all pictured at different stages of a race. There’s rain of biblical proportions outside which is only adding to the picture of endurance Jones is about to reflect on, egged on by our surroundings serving as some sort of pathetic fallacy. ‘You know, horses are racing day after day after day and then at the end of their career, they go out to sea or they become dog food and I’m not saying humans can relate to that specific experience but that mentality of being told to race and race again, thinking “If i get there, then it will be good” is very relatable for most of us’, Jones states, before reflecting on his own experiences. ‘I never used to celebrate once I'd solved a problem, I would always find something else to chase to keep my misery occupied and so I was never hitting my own targets because I was also simultaneously changing the goal posts in my life as soon as I felt I was hitting them, the artist reveals. ‘It was always “onto the next”, never “wow I did this” - which then resulted in this sort of self-fulfilling prophecy of sadness, I was going round and round in circles, I was a pessimist through and through’.
Comprising two spectacularly sculptural and sophisticated spaces (a 140 sqm project space and a 900 sqm main gallery space, both of which have been designed by architecture and design studio, Carvalho Araújo), Duarte Sequeira is nothing short of a contemporary art lovers dream. Adding to the artistic utopia, the gallery is also surrounded by a sculpture park that hosts annual exhibitions and events as well as some more permanent editions (current sculptural works on show include pieces by Erwin Wurm, Julian Opie, Jean-Marie Appriou), it also has a space in London and as of 2022, an additional gallery in Seoul's Gangnam district, making it truly international.
As mentioned, while visiting Jones' exhibition at the gallery, we were unexpectedly greeted by a torrential downpour - certainly not an ideal experience, particularly for viewing the sculpture park but nonetheless, I can't help but feel as though the weather almost added to the grandeur of Duarte Sequeira; a space that has succeeded in being as spectacular as the works on show while also not stealing the limelight. Although not subtle, I wouldn't describe the two buildings as imposing either, but rather, gentle - an attribute which bodes well with the hidden themes in Jones' work surrounding the idea of rebirth, whether that be literal or metaphorical.
It is a fair statement to say this is undoubtedly Jones’ most joyously colourful work to date - especially when compared with the artist's recent works. Shades of mocha brown and forest green are illuminated by coral reds and tangerines. Horses necks are enmeshed, as are their saddle cloths, legs and hooves. There’s a kineticism to each individual painting that doesn’t transfer too well on a screen - a kind of frenzied rush which contrasts the fact it took Jones an entire year to complete this series. When viewed up close, differentiating each limb and numbered saddle cloth from another is a near impossible task - with most depictions bearing an intense likeness to a sea of dancing bodies en masse - some animal, some human - caught in the action. Ever moving, twisting, turning and evolving into mounds of flesh, divided by nothing but colour and paint. The blur of it all is quite spectacular and, as it’s the most obvious embodiment of movement - an integral factor in this series. ‘I thought a lot about how vision works during the making of these’ Jones admits. ‘I’m interested in that idea of how a brain reacts to a painting and that idea of mass movement, this idea of “if I only look at half of you, my brain is filling in the gaps for the other half”, so when you look at a painting, you can only focus on it bit by bit’. When viewed from afar, only then does one get this overarching sense of completeness in Jones’ work, one which refutes the idea of abstraction in celebration of unity; however bright that concept may be. Alas, one thing is for sure: these are horses frozen in time, forever running the final furlong on a home stretch that never ends.
If you’re even slightly familiar with Jones’ work, you’d recognise such a melancholic theme (and subsequent rat race, circus-style analogy) to be consistent, dare I say, even predictable for the The Sunday Painter-represented artist, whose work often delves into themes of absence, control and introspection. Mostly underpinned by grief - an emotion that has propelled much of Jones’ work into existence after the experience of losing his father and friend in the same year - Jones tells me how, ‘to begin with, the works had quite a sombre palette to them’ (presumably in keeping with the horse race analogy that fixated the artist). ‘Then, half way through the year it took into making this work, my fiancé (Alice) became pregnant’, Jones reveals; an event which undeniably changed the course of the work dramatically. ‘Suddenly, I realised just how negative I had become and how easy it was for me to always connect with the negative targets and things going wrong in my life. I had this literal light bulb moment where everything was forced into perspective and I felt like I was growing up, like I was going from boy to man overnight’.
Growing up is something Jones knows how to do well, not least because he is now about to become a father but because the artist has first-hand experience of what grief - in its all-encompassing-darkness-that-knocks-you-sideways-presence - does to a person. ‘I lost both my dad and my friend in the same year,’ Jones confesses. ‘When that happens to a person, it triggers this period of immense growth, where you’re thrown into the deep end of quite literally growing up, and the only person there to pull you upwards is yourself. It’s something I think about a lot now that I'm having a child - how I want him to grow up and what kind of father I want to be - especially as I'm now without mine so it’s about that kind of dynamic as well.’
Representing yet another unexplored take on the masculine entity that is the horse is Luca Brown, whose accompanying exhibition at Duarte Sequiera The Islands Are Home serves to live in tandem with his friend Jones’ own horses. ‘Although the subject matter is the same, we are both coming at it from two very different perspectives,' notes Brown when we speak. ‘And although those perspectives are unrelated, they’re still part of the same conversation.’ The conversation Brown is referring to is one already touched upon - the reason this entire series was started in the first place. ‘Originally, we were talking about the herd mentality together', Jones chimes in. ‘How me and Luca had very different upbringings but we had still become incredibly close despite it all. The world is constantly telling you about differences between people and tribes and herds and we thought “well we’ve found our own herd.”’We have an incredibly mixed wonderful group of different friends and we make up one herd, one family.’ Just as Jones’ paintings touch on this idea literally, so do Brown’s with the minor change being his herd is made up of humans, not animals. Oh, they’re also on the other side of the world.
‘This series is born out of nothing more than a desire to take photographs of people, things and events that I am compelled towards capturing, for no reason whatsoever’, Brown starts, turning to face his timeless photographic works. ‘It all started when I went to Barbados for the first time, an island that sort of feels like home as my dad is from St Lucia. So I was there and I came across this horse racing track - stunned by the fact that there were these black jockeys in the Caribbean, who’d have thought? For me, it was something totally different to what I had seen growing up; different representations of young black men in these different environments.’
To a Westerner, horse racing is undoubtedly elitist, an opinion only endorsed by events like Cheltenham Festival, and so for Brown, witnessing black jockeys in the Caribbean ‘presented a great juxtaposition between what you think you know and what is actually true,’ he continues. ‘Horse racing in the UK is this very white, elitist establishment - and then you have this black community in the Caribbean that the sport also speaks to - I'm no photographer but I just had this urgency to document this, so I went down there at 5am every morning wanting to capture this amazing little ecosystem.’
The reason Brown's horses work next to Jones' is because both artists have their own style, totally independent from the other. Jones' paintings are contemporary, modern, and profoundly abstract whereas Brown's photographs are timeless and elegant, almost charming to a fault. They have an Arthur Elgort quality to them which tricks you into thinking you're looking at a 1980s portrait. 'I'm just drawn to things that feel like they’re not from any particular time', Brown admits. 'I’m always taking photos of old women and men who dress really well for the same reasons.' Regardless of each artist's style and medium being totally unique to them, where both Jones and Brown's interpretations overlap and intertwine is in their longing to connect with their roots, whether that be emotional, familial or geographical; we are all walking collages of where we come from, no matter where we end up.
Target by Patrick. H Jones is on show at Duarte Sequeira until 30 November, 2024.