Galerie Anne-Laure Buffard
Gregory Hodge , Australia
"Afterlight, Solo Show Gregory Hodge"
Gregory Hodge, Afterlight, 2025. Acrylique sur lin, 130 x 97 cm © Courtesy Galerie Anne-Laure Buffard
Following its acclaimed presence on the gallery stand at the 2025 edition of Art Paris, at the Grand Palais, Galerie Anne-Laure Buffard is pleased to present Afterlight, the first Solo Show devoted to Australian artist Gregory Hodge in the space at 6 rue Chapon. The exhibition is part of the Paris Gallery Weekend 2025 program, and will feature a conversation with Amélie Adamo on Thursday June 5 at 7pm.
Born in Australia in 1982, Gregory Hodge is a well-known painter on the Asia-Pacific scene, where he enjoys a strong institutional presence, with works in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia and the Wollongong art gallery, among others. Recently settled in Paris, he is undertaking a residency at the Cité des Arts in 2024, during which his research will focus on the influence of tapestries from the Manufacture des Gobelins on Nabis paintings by Bonnard, Vuillard and Denis held at the Musée d’Orsay.
This Solo Show, dedicated to the artist’s latest works and placed under the aegis of the interplay of representation and light, is a continuation of the projects undertaken by Gregory Hodge during his residency at the Cité internationale des arts (2024) and in line with the Landscapes series presented in the final of the Wynne Prize at the National South Wales Gallery in 2023.
The exhibition Afterlight – whose title is borrowed from one of the artist’s major works, a forest painted against the light, where each tree seems to be dressed in all the colors of the world – gives pride of place to the nuances and dispersion of light. The artist asks: what can we see beyond the light? And each canvas responds with an ever more original vibration, unfolding a weave of lines and dabs of color that call for a perpetual shift of gaze and a constant rediscovery of the image.
The deliberately hand-crafted quality of his canvases, which mimic the weave of a tapestry, enables Gregory Hodge to offer a contemporary variation on trompe-l’œil, made possible by meticulous photocollage and the combined use of acrylic paint and translucent pigmented gels. In Seascape, landscape and silouhette, body and scenery play out the same score, plunging us alternately into total abstraction. Through the canvas, the artist pursues a reflection on the concept of perception and changing color, inherited from the Nabis and the Impressionists, but also informed by the new possibilities offered by Photoshop filters and digital brushes.
For his recent paintings, in which nature is omnipresent, the artist uses specially hand-crafted tools and brushes to create layered compositions that hint at snow-covered landscapes (Winter Landscape) or coastal sunsets (Sunset abstraction), as well as ribbon-like pictorial gestures moving across the surface of still lifes, as in the works Sunflowers andInterior with books.
“Gregory Hodge paints from photographs, but it’s less about realism than about memory. There are the moments lived, a few portraits of loved ones, but above all this play with painting itself, Seurat’s divisionism, Vuillard’s ability to fuse bodies and scenery in a single motif. His comparison of his work with tapestry opens up new perspectives, going against the grain of an aesthetic of the moment. The artist works in acrylics to give him greater freedom of gesture. He develops his own tools to touch the canvas, to lose himself in it in a practice that at times verges on meditation”.
- Henri Guette
The exhibition is accompanied by a booklet featuring a previously unpublished text on the artist’s work by art critic and curator Henri Guette.
Solo show of Gregory Hodge
From April 30th to June 14th, 2025
Rendez-Vous
Friday 23 May 2025 from 5:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Night opening – Galerie Anne-Laure Buffard
Saturday 24 May 2025 from 4:00 pm to 7:00 pm
Tea time – Galerie Anne-Laure Buffard
Sunday 25 May 2025 from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm
Brunch – Galerie Anne-Laure Buffard
75003 Paris, France 01 45 31 72 51 annelaurebuffard.com
The gallery
Founded in 2022, Galerie Anne-Laure Buffard represents a select stable of international artists to whom it offers tailor-made support for collectors and museums alike, forging privileged relationships with festivals (Les rencontres d'Arles, Bratislava Biennale, 100% Villette, Photo Phomn Pehn. ...) and institutions (Victoria and Albert Museum, Huis Marseille in Amsterdam, MEP, BNF, Musée Guimet, Amis de Pompidou...), accompanying each project with a bilingual publication signed by renowned authors from the art scene (Fiona Rogers, Guillaume Logé, Grégoire Prangé, Michel Poivert, Nanda van den Berg...).
With a particular penchant for issues of representation and narrative, Galerie Anne-Laure Buffard represents artists from different generations and in a variety of practices - painting, sculpture, photography, poetry, video, installation and digital art - acknowledging the porosity of approaches and mediums in contemporary art. From the outset, the gallery has participated in leading international fairs such as Paris Photo, Art Paris, Art Brussels and Asia Now.
Gallery artists
Elie Bouisson, Gilles Caron, Pauline-Rose Dumas, Yoshimi Futamura, Ilanit Illouz, Nhu Xuan Hua, Park Chae Biole, Park Chae Dalle, Pierre-Elie de Pibrac, Antoine Ronin, Bachelot & Caron
