Night is Imminent: MAYA HEWITT

[April 14th , 2011 Hong Kong]—10 Chancery Lane Gallery is pleased to announce London-based artist Maya Hewitt’s first Hong Kong exhibition. Her paintings have a luring Asian presence partially derived from her attraction to Japanese flat paintings where she studied at the Nagoya University of Art and a mysterious intrigue with the Far East obtained from her half Filipino parentage. Maya Hewitt uses symbolic narrative to explore the notion of reality and fiction. Her paintings are presented as environments of connecting plots or pieces within a larger narrative. Her first Hong Kong exhibition at 10 Chancery Lane Gallery, Central will take place from April 14th-May 14th, 2011

Hewitt’s recent visits to Hong Kong have had a strong impression on her and can be perceived in the details of the present work. The vibrancy of this dense cityscape seeps into the mise-en-scene where both mundane and mythical elements of the city are indulged upon. Often painting in a flat drawing like style, her canvases are juxtaposed within the space to suggest a singular installation allowing multiple stories to unfold. Within these scenes she externalises events occurring beneath the surface of everyday human interactions, bridging a gap between childish fantasy and adult interpretation.

Across the work there are multiple shifts in scale, between figures and objects, where constructs of intensely populated micro-landscapes, encoded visual chronicles and plural mythologies coexist. The figures seem lost in reflective loneliness; they exhibit a sense of detachment yet are inextricably bound to one another.

Maya Hewitt is at the forefront of a younger generation of artists exploring a return to painted figuration. Yet, though figurative, representational and expressive, even – the paintings depict an anxiety apparently borne from the artist’s particular living environment and sub-cultural interests.

Hewitt, presently based in London, has participated in numerous exhibitions internationally including, most recently Passion Fruits, Thomas Olbricht collection, Berlin (2010), Nocturne, Bischoff Weiss Gallery, London (2010) and Elusive Dreams which travelled from La Cathedrale, Paris to the Irish Museum of Contemporary Art (2009). Hewitt studied at the University of Brighton, Camberwell College of Art, Winchester School of Art as well as the Nagoya University of Art in Japan and was a participant in residencies under the auspices of both Tokyo Wonder Site and the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation. In 2010, Hewitt collaborated with noted Tokyo-based jewelry designer Yoshiyo Abbe (Petite Robe Noire) on the exhibition Stones in Paws.