30 Emerging Artists to Watch During Frieze Week
Artsy Editorial
Night Gold Half Wig echoes the elements of fantasy and sensuality found in much of Than Hussein Clark’s work. The artist uses a variety of materials to investigate the tensions between reality and artistry. Fascinated by the idea of decor as a disguise, Clark creates affluently ornamented tapestries, spaces, and objects that carry with them a mysterious aura. His work has been exhibited extensively, including shows at Mathew Gallery, Berlin and Freedman Fitzpatrick, Los Angeles.
About Than Hussein Clark
Exploring authenticity, gay culture, and theatricality, Than Hussein Clark constructs interiors in order to reveal underlying aesthetic values. His Waves installation incorporates a hand-tufted carpet constructed to look like a gilded stucco ceiling, ornamental bronzes, wooden stools, and painted curtains to impose a spatial and functional reversal on Viennese Neo-Rococo and Japonisme architectures. The intent of such works is to address citizenship, anxieties, aspirations, and aesthetics. Clark has further appropriated aesthetic objects, as in the case of Cancellation: Binoculars, which cuts porcelain vessels by Edmund de Waal into new forms, or Cancellation: Cigarettes, which reconstructs a rare photograph of Henry James into a piece of drug paraphernalia. With authenticity as his raw material, Clark reworks existing objects to explore notions of reality and artistry.
American, b. 1981, Exeter, New Hampshire, based in London, England and Hamburg, Germany
