Sean Scully: Uninsideout Exhibition
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From May 17th, an exhibition showcasing the works of one of the most important contemporary artists, Sean Scully, can be seen at the Hungarian National Gallery. The Museum of Fine Arts – Hungarian National Gallery organized a retrospective exhibition of Sean Scully’s oeuvre in 2020, after which the artist donated significant works to the Museum of Fine Arts. The Hungarian National Gallery is now presenting these works.
In 2020, the Museum of Fine Arts – Hungarian National Gallery organized a highly successful retrospective exhibition of Sean Scully’s art titled “Passenger.” Following the exhibition, Scully gifted several important works to the Museum of Fine Arts: the monumental painting “Uninsideout,” specifically reworked for the Budapest exhibition; the series of colored prints based on iPhone drawings titled “The 50”; the ten-piece aquatint series “Landlines and Robes”; and three of his most recent pencil drawings.
The exhibition at the Hungarian National Gallery now presents these donated works. The pieces offer a broad overview of the artist’s oeuvre: the painterly structure of “Uninsideout,” built on insets, overpainted surfaces, and various motifs and surface treatments arranged side by side, above and below one another, allows viewers to make visual connections between the artist’s iPhone drawings reinterpreting various motifs, the soft patches of the aquatint series “Landlines and Robes,” and the delicate hatching of his recent pencil drawings. The ensemble of works not only reveals essential motifs of the oeuvre but also emphasizes an important yet less emphasized characteristic of Scully’s art: the medial diversity of the oeuvre, the significance of transitions between different art forms, the diversity within unity, and the unity within diversity.
“Uninsideout” can also be interpreted as a metaphor for this diversity forming into unity. According to the artist, the painting deals with the issues of disruption, displacement, and migration. Scully pushes together three monumental picture fields, creating a triptych, not only evoking a classical art form (primarily associated with altarpieces) but also establishing a dialectical structure built on contrasts and correspondences. In the works, each picture field opens twice, and Scully displaces, replaces, and repaints the insets wedged into the windows, creating a complex visual system of correspondences and discrepancies, connections, and separations.
Scully began creating iPhone drawings in April 2021. Similar to pastel paintings, he used his finger to draw lines and patches reminiscent of his larger compositions. The series showcases almost the entire arsenal of the artist’s motifs and image types, and the prints made from the digital drawings are arranged into a large composition along a square grid. Scully’s motifs are similarly reinterpreted when the artist chooses a more traditional medium: the volatile, fluid color patches and bands of the aquatints create fragile versions of the monumental oil paintings. In the pieces of the “Landlines and Robes” series, we can observe more intimate variants of the monumental, majestic surfaces of the landscapes.
In 2023, the artist began another series of fragile beauty: he reimagined his familiar motifs as pencil drawings, as a complex system of delicate hatchings. The drawings donated to the Museum of Fine Arts depict a “Wall of Light” (“Wall of Light 11.9.23,” 2023), a “Wall Landline” (“8.26.23,” 2023), and a “Wall” composed of two parts (“2.6.24,” 2024). The compositions are built on the subtle differences of gray shades and the rhythm of deep gray and black tones.
Sean Scully is among the most important artists in the contemporary art scene, having renewed the traditions of abstraction. “Scully’s historical significance lies in how he was able to carry the great achievement of abstract expressionism into the contemporary context,” said Arthur C. Danto, one of the most important interpreters of his art. The works on display at the exhibition also confirm the American theoretician’s statement: Scully’s art, although touching upon timeless themes, fundamentally conveys contemporary experiences, in light of which the classical painting traditions also gain new illumination.
Sean Scully was born in Dublin in 1945. Today, he lives and works in New York, Bavaria, Aix-en-Provence, and London. His works can be found in the collections of almost all major museums worldwide.
The curator of the exhibition is art historian Dávid Fehér.