Vincent Hawkins — À propos — Slash Paris

The colours Vincent Hawkins hangs on the wall — scraps of fragile paper or flimsy card — hover in space, sensitive to the least breath of air. Pinned or sometimes simply laid on the floor, they display the delicate, razor’s-edge balance all Hawkins’s work strives to maintain. These painted leftovers — almost sculptures — are the outcome of an ongoing paring-down of the artist’s resources. He was painting on canvas, but his attention was deflected towards the scraps of cardboard that guided the drawing of the shapes. The clumsy lines and the brushstrokes overflowing onto these improvised stencils leave footnotes to the pictures, unassuming productions needing only some straightening-up. A few fold-lines mark their surface. Sometimes just one. Next to nothing. Arrangement of the fragments is enough to form a work of art, a vast, multicoloured assemblage of broken lines and colour matches running from the floor up the wall. The only backdrop is the white of the wall, contrasting (all but imperceptibly) with the blankness of the paper. The arrangement itself is precise and meticulous, while paradoxically seeming open-ended. Its overt precariousness illustrates the creative process that steers this ephemeral art: everything can be made and unmade, while the artist repurposes non-classical materials. The paintings Vincent Hawkins is still producing have learnt from this orchestration of vividly coloured fragments in time and space; and we can spot pentimenti there, hidden among motifs that look to have been cut out with collage in mind. Once again, the shapes are there, hanging fire — and their harmony, obviously, is a matter of fragility.

— Antoine Camenen for L’ahah, 2019
(English translation : John Tittensor)