Nicky Hoberman

The People in My Studio

The distinguished American painter Phillip Guston once remarked in a quote which he later attributed to John Cage, that 'when you start working, everybody is in your studio - the past, your friends, your enemies, the art world and above all your own ideas - all are there. But as you continue painting they start to leave, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then if you are lucky, even you leave'.

I often think about this remark when I encounter the work of principally studio-based artists; the thought processes they engage and the decision making they encounter and the company they spiritually and emotionally keep in that very private act of making. And it seems especially apt when considering the work of Nicky Hoberman, such has been the consistency in her chosen subject matter over the years - primarily daughters of friends and friends of friends - and who themselves have become close friends and acquaintances of the artist herself as they inhabit every scrap of space in the artist's place of making.

Yet if Hoberman were to physically invite all of those who make up her world into her studio, the likelihood is that she would fail to recognise them, despite the years of rendering their faces in charcoal, pastel and oil. Hoberman suffers from a condition called prosopagnosia, a disorder in which people are unable to recognise faces and which was made famous by Oliver Sacks' 'Dr.P' in his 1985 collection of essays The Man who Mistook his wife for a Hat . In the book Dr.P fails to recognise his wife and even his closest of friends and family save for the most acute detail - his brother's chipped tooth for instance. And whilst this may seem somewhat of an aside in the discussion of Hoberman's practice, it nonetheless goes some way to explaining the artist's adamant assertion that the images for which she has become widely acclaimed should certainly not be considered in anyway, 'portraits'.

For Hoberman the prolific breadth of childrens' faces that she presents are in no way a desire to capture or portray an essence or individual trait of those depicted, but instead represent a 'type' - and thus are employed as a device to determine and delineate a more psychological and emotive space within the work rather than any suggestion of biographical narrative.

Nonetheless this selection of fifteen drawings presented here to mark Hoberman's current exhibition, displays with alacrity the artist's imagination and adventure in experimenting with the physical space of the drawing surface to suggest varying emotional states. The work presented dates primarily from 2005 and consists of large scale pastel drawings on varying paper supports; white cartridge and tracing paper predominantly. The degree of translucency in the drawing surface evokes Hoberman's ongoing interest in the physical and metaphorical act of veiling.

It is an interest that continues in the most recent series of Hoberman's paintings called Disguise in which the mask is made material in the painted faces of her subjects at once threatening and protective, a means by which to engage with the world or to be dislocated from it. In a recent work, Painted Flowers, 2008, Hoberman's stylistic approach appears liberated from her previous tendency towards photo-realism - the rich and conscious tapestry of brushstrokes asserting a greater confidence in the materiality of the painted surface.

Hoberman's drawings however are treated with a discerning economy in the use of only two colours; an electric cerise coupled with a fizzing lemon yellow for instance and another drawing which comprises a palette of baby blue with a shocking neon pink. Such economy in chosen materials allows for greater focus on Hoberman's subject matter; the playful array of young girls in varying almost psychedelic compositions - solely, but for the occasional punctuation of numerous feline friends.

Cats frequently appear throughout these works, their balletic poses acting as counterpoint - graphically and psychologically to the postures adopted by the girls. Indeed it is the inclusion of the cats and the rare recognisable fashion accessory - the Converse sandals for instance - that gives rise to any symbolic clue or texture perhaps to subject's character. In Powderpuff, 2005 for instance the slender, elongated back of the cat against the squatted figure creates unease by radically switching the viewing planes of the composition from traditional perspectival to a dizzying aerial view. This duality of views gives emphasis to the symbolic value placed on the inclusion of cats in the history of painting; of superstition, of deceit, of witchcraft, of lust. For Hoberman the cats represent the malicious and malevolent side to the girls' character, the tendency for isolation and for not relating. One recalls arguably the most illustrious use of the cat in twentieth century painting, that of Edouard Manet's black cat as an ominous presence at the very right hand frame of the renowned painting Olympia, 1863.

And whilst Hoberman's cats may take on a more proactive role in the compositions and are more readily acknowledged (here, the child's hands appear to mimic the paws of her acquaintance in a gesture of compatriotism) they nonetheless forcefully take on the role of a dark alter-ego to the main protagonist. This very suggestion of play and of play-acting gathers momentum when looking at this body of work en masse. It is not just the children themselves that might be perceived as conforming to type but certainly the postures and gestures they adopt. And there is the suggestion of a double bluff, as in Odalisque, 2005 of a distinct knowingness of the perceived juvenility and immaturity and an awkward cumbersomeness that their barley controllable limbs portray. Such postures belie the method by which Hoberman comes to make the work, as the starting point for all of these drawings is a selection of photographic images taken by the artist - images that themselves are replete with the inherent sense of 'performing for the camera'. It was Barthes after all, who suggested that photography resonates with the arts primarily through theatre rather than through painting. In Swan, 2005 Hoberman even adheres pink netting fabric as if to accentuate the theatrical premise - she gives license to her subjects to perform, to escape, to daydream...

This very act of daydream seems to take on added significance in Hoberman's work, recalling arguably the most persuasive critique of space and the childhood psyche in Bachelard's influential The Poetics of Space . His insistence on the formative impact of the daydream coupled with his compelling description of the remembrance of place through the most intimate of spaces and the relationship of the infant body to those places - to corners and closets and cupboards - strikes a chord when viewing these works. In some drawings as in Hunter, 2005 - it is as though the figure itself trails off into the physical and psychological recesses of the depicted space.

Yet Hoberman resists from suggesting what that space might be, it is neither domestic nor public, we are neither invited in nor denied access. It is rather the ambiguous non-space, the 'elsewhere' of the vacant ground that presents more questions than answers and as with all these works invites more fiction than asserts hard fact.

Michael Stanley, Director, MODERN ART OXFORD, UK