NYAB Event - Bendel Hydes "Circumnavigating the Globe"

Bendel Hydes "Circumnavigating the Globe"

Tenri Cultural Institute

This event has ended.

Bendel Hydes was born in 1952, in a place that the American photojournalist David Douglas Duncan was prompted to call ‘The Islands That Time Forgot.’ In fact, the islands of Hydes’ birth were not even on the world map until 1966. Today, these three tiny islands that pop up in the Caribbean Sea between Cuba, Jamaica and Central America are called the Cayman Islands. Technologically speaking, Caymanians wouldn’t see a telephone until 1964, or a TV until 1977 but they could see with their naked eyes, the American war ships approaching the Bay of Pigs in 1961. After attending Liverpool and Canterbury Colleges of Art in England, and Clark University in Massachusetts, Hydes moved back to Cayman. In 1982 he returned to the U.S., settling in a section of lower Manhattan called Tribeca. Here, Hydes’ world would change with the inescapable pressures of the 21st century, yet this new proximity to water in the rivers that surround Manhattan island maintained a connection to a world he knew best. In fact, it was in his Manhattan studio that the emphasis in Hydes’ life and work would move toward harmony and beauty.

Hydes’ paintings, which are very nebulous in form and composition, are like emotional after images, while the surfaces of his canvases hold subtle tinges of disruptions such as brush hairs, undigested, dark paint spots in pools of color thinned in turpentine, or bits and pieces of debris that live temporarily in the New York City air until they alight in the drying oil paint. Yet, despite all of the impurities, all of the interference, the overall washes and veils of color would remain in harmony. For this exhibition, the artist represents with color, symbol and expression the entire planet in twelve 30 degrees sections of longitude. The dozen paintings, which were executed over the past two years, move across the surface of the earth from -180 degrees west to +180 degrees east, serving as a metaphoric journey around the globe in a sailing vessel that could cover the entire latitudinal space at one time. As a result, land masses, cultures, current events and of course, water, blend together as a frothy, and at times, furious mix of color and texture.

In each work, there is an uncanny visceral effect marking this journey as a revelation. We are left to interpret the world through the filter of a person who has come full circle from a most pure way of thinking and living into the most complicated era that time has ever known. We are shown the cleansing power of our planet, even if we do so many things to destroy it. We understand the journey, and how much more important it is to feel and experience the world around us more deeply.