Alan Uglow

Who is Alan Uglow?

Alan Uglow was an English-born abstract painter. In 1969 he moved to New York City, where he also worked in construction to help support himself. In 1978 and 1979 he exhibited at Mary Boone Gallery in New York City. His artwork was frequently exhibited in Europe, including shows in Sweden in the 1980s and Cologne, Germany at Gunther Umberg's Raum fur Malerai in 1984 when he was not exhibiting in New York City. His work during this period combined painting with the corporeal sensibility of installation work. He has also combined his paintings with sound recordings, and created large colored or monochrome panels for installation. In the early 1980s, he played in a rock band called Hard Labour.

In a 2010 review, in the Brooklyn Rail, of Uglow's work exhibited at Haus Esters and at the Museum Wiesbaden, Joan Waltemath writes: "Uglow’s paintings interact with the space in front of them, … their interior space emerges through the act of seeing itself. …The dense materiality and perfectly pitched, painted surfaces are calibrated to speak through the visual to the haptic. You need the hair on your skin in order to read the subtext of an Uglow painting."