(Atlanta 1981–lives and works in Brooklyn)

Night Night. 2015.

Acrylic, oil, lacquer and spray colour on canvas.

Signed, dated, titled, with mearsurements and location on the reverse: "Night Night" SHARA HUGHES 2015 58×48 NYC.

147.5 × 122 cm.

Provenance:
- Grieder Contemporary, Zurich (verso with the label).
- Private collection.
- Purchased from the above by the present owner.

"Everyone knows what a landscape looks like—there is an entire tradition of painting that informs our expectations. I wondered how I could take something that is seemingly so known and make it mine, while still getting all the satisfaction of painting, and the history of painting, in one." Shara Hughes.

Shara Hughes was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1981. She studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2004. Her work has been included in numerous group and solo exhibitions in China, France, Switzerland, the UK and the US, including the MET, the Rachofsky Collection, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Whitney Museum of Art in New York. An entire room was dedicated to the artist at the Whitney Biennial in 2017. Shara Hughes lives and works in Brooklyn, New York and is one of today's most sought-after artists.

Her early work incorporated narratives of her private life in predominantly elaborate interior scenes. For Hughes, at the time this genre was ideal as a way for her to express herself, while also ensuring the greatest possible artistic freedom in her works:"(...) within an interior, you can make a landscape through a window or you can make another person's painting within the painting, or you can paint figures or not."

With her move to New York in 2014, the interlocking interior views transformed into unreal, almost otherworldly landscapes, the so-called "invented landscapes". Here, the artist makes use of a broad, often garish colour palette and combines a wide variety of paint media and instruments to lead the viewer on a voyage of discovery into a mystical dream world, far removed from traditional landscape painting.

That Hughes' work is inspired by currents of Fauvism, Surrealism or Symbolism is evident in her rebellion against conventional representations of light and space. Likewise, spontaneous painting techniques, playful structures and perspectives are used, which are reminiscent of the painterly innovations of Hockney and Munch. Her canvases become the setting for rolling hills, meandering rivers, gnarled, menacing trees, magical coastlines and, not infrequently, oversized floral displays, all loosely arranged yet seeming to merge.

Nevertheless, Hughes repeatedly emphasises that her depictions are based on pure intuition. They represent not so much landscapes, but rather a kind of abstract self-portraiture and self-reflection. They possibly also serve as a bridge between abstraction and representation. For Hughes, the idea of landscape embodies a tremendous openness that can be attributed to the constant state of change, be it due to the time of day, the weather, the growth or death of plants. Hughes skilfully embraces as her own this supposed uncertainty in the sense of transformation. In this way, her works reveal a psychological complexity that, although deeply personal, is open enough to allow the viewer to project their own memories and bring to life a world that is at once elegant and chaotic - imbued with a vibrant harmony of the organic, the subjective and the surreal.

In "Night Night", Hughes visualises a stretch of dune leading out to sea. Although the work was created a year after her move to the East Coast, it remains open as to whether the landscape in question is a throwback to the beaches of Long Island. The artist draws on the rather more subdued shades of red, green and brown, which, rounded off by orange, yellow, blue and beige, occupy the foreground of the picture. In contrast to the flat arrangement, Hughes achieves a loosening effect through the use of spray paint in the area of the path that leads us straight to the water. She marks the edges of the black and yellow water horizontally with pink and orange stripes that run towards the path. With the moon floating in the centre and reflected on the surface, a nocturnal mood is created regardless of the bright visual effect. Night Night is thus not only a testament to Hughes' skilful use of different perspectives but also to her ability to constantly challenge the viewer's imagination.