Racing Thoughts-Fever Dreaming: New Paintings by Carl E Hazlewood
Rounding out a very good year for Carl E Hazlewood in 2022, Welancora Gallery in Brooklyn, New York, presented Racing Thoughts-Fever Dreaming: New Paintings by Carl E Hazlewood at Art Basel Miami Beach, from November 29 to December 3, 2022.
Art Basel stands at the pinnacle of the contemporary art world. From its inception, it has been at the helm of setting trends and giving space to new approaches to art. As a consequence, over the last 53 years, it has established itself as one of the most prestigious art events. The annual art fair brings together the work of prominent and established artists alongside those of emerging artists, gallerists, and curators from across the art world. The fair is also a magnet for collectors and art enthusiasts. Founded in 1970, Art Basel appears to have immediately established itself as a leading international art fair hosting 90 galleries alongside 30 publishers from nearly a dozen countries (10 to be precise). The inaugural exhibition was also visited by 16,000 people. In 1978, Hazlewood participated in the art fair with the Organisation for Independent Artists (OIA). Today the fair, which takes its name from its original host city in Switzerland, has ‘branch fairs’ in major cities across the globe from Miami to Hong Kong to Paris.
Art Basel Miami Beach, the first of these ‘branch fairs,’ debuted in 2002. Sited in Miami, it was poised to tap into the lucrative North and Latin American art markets, but just as importantly, to grow in its international scope of gallery and artist representation. The first edition featured 160 international galleries and attracted 30,000 visitors. Twenty years later, in 2022 Art Basel Miami reported hosting 277 galleries and attracting 79,000 visitors over the five days of the event. Additionally, it was reported that leading art patrons and private collectors from over 92 countries and territories were in attendance along with representatives from at least 200 cultural institutions and foundations; thus, solidifying Art Basel Miami as the premier art fair of the Americas.
Without a doubt, Art Basel Miami is of great importance to artists establishing themselves in the global art market. Showing in one of its three exhibition spaces is an accomplishment and should not be confused with showing in a peripheral space – a gallery or pop-up space within the city’s limits not affiliated with the fair. Thus, the fact that Hazlewood exhibited in one of the three official spaces of the fair is an accomplishment.
But this is surpassed by the fact that Hazlewood’s gallerist hosted a solo exhibition of nine of Hazlewood’s recent paintings and the display of these was adjudged by a writer for a high-profile online art magazine as one of the top ten must-see exhibitions of Art Basel Miami. The writer also described Hazlewood’s images as “awe-inspiring, ethereal abstractions.” Thus, Hazlewood’s work was able to stand up superbly alongside works by artists who stand out in art’s rich and diverse history.
Although he did not travel to Miami, hot on the heels of Art Basel Miami, Hazlewood hosted Blackhead Anansi: Constellations, at the Charlotte & Philip Hanes Art Gallery at Wake Forest University, North Carolina, from February to March 2023. Then, he made Blackhead Anansi Sails Across the Savannah, a work made directly on the walls of the gallery with materials that are both conventional and unconventional for art. Consequently, he challenges both the form and materiality of the art object. The work deliberately defies easy categorising as it is painted as one expects with a painting (it combines both acrylic and latex paints) but it is also ‘made’ as one may expect of a sculpture - to be made. Blackhead Anansi carves out space, defining its parameters with suggestions and thus how we relate to it. However, it also obliterates its own parameters and instead, the physical limits of the wall is a containing feature. Furthermore, in its sculptural aspect, the work is an assemblage (an assembly of parts to make a whole) and obviously exists as a homage to contemporary sculpture; it is an assemblage of disparate non-traditional materials put together to make a cohesive whole. In being made against the wall, with materials like netting attached to it and occupying space in front of it, the work toys with aspects of relief sculpture. It is in its sculptural aspect too that the work capitalises best on the trickster aspect of Anansi and spins its webs of connections. The work is also a drawing with a strong engagement with lines, shapes, overlapping, interpenetrations and movement.
Hazlewood has shown his work in a long list of group exhibitions, solo exhibitions, and a handful of two-person exhibitions. He has also been a recipient of numerous awards such as a 2010 Guyana Cultural Association of New York Award for his contribution to the arts. Hazlewood has not only served art and artists through Aljira a Center for Contemporary Art which he co-founded, but he also collaborated with individuals such as Nigerian curator Okwui Enwezor (1963-2019) on curatorial projects as well as institutions such as The Studio Museum in Harlem and the Philippine Consulate both in New York City. He has written extensively about art and artists and served on the editorial boards of both Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, (Duke University Press), and The Arts Journal: Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Literature, History, Art and Culture of Guyana and the Caribbean (Georgetown). Hazlewood has received numerous fellowships including a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Emerging Artist Fellowship to facilitate a residency at the Vermont Studio Center in 2016, is a beneficiary of the Brown Foundation Fellows Program at the Dora Maar House, France in 2018; and has had repeat residences with MacDowell in New Hampshire. On February 13, 2024, Hazlewood became the most recent recipient of the Benny Andrews Fellowship administered through MacDowell.
Hazlewood’s journey with art began informally as a child who was homeschooled due to illness and was given latitude to explore as he wished. Eventually after migrating to the US from Georgetown, Hazlewood attended the Brooklyn Museum School from 1970 to 1971 and Pratt Institute from 1971 to 1975. Immediately after earning his BFA with Honours, Hazlewood began postgraduate study and in 1977 earned an MA from Hunter College of the City University of New York. While still a student at Pratt, Hazlewood also attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in the summer of 1973.