Paris London Hong Kong and Volume Gallery are pleased to announce its first solo exhibition with James Hyde, Varieties of Useful Experience, opening September 12^th from 5-7pm at 845 West Washington Blvd, Chicago.

“Let us suppose that the idea of art can be expanded to embrace the whole range of man-made things, including all tools and writing in addition to the useless, beautiful and poetic things of the world” – George Kubler, The Shape of Things, 1961

Varieties of Useful Experience sets out to address this concept of reconsidering the domestic scale and approach the whole domestic landscape or environment. In the context of this exhibition the paintings become ‘wall decoration’ and have a function that is of the same importance as the chair or table.

As Hyde states with regards to where his interest lie “the utopian experiments of in design from William Morris to Brasilia; this is all involved in sort of the type of adventure of the aesthetic into new territories, and this both internalization and externalization of ideas of looking and how that effects people personally and even morally.”

This exhibition explores these themes with a variety of objects: chairs, paintings, tables, handles, frescos, sculptures, and lighting. Including materials like steel, linen, paint, enamel, vinyl, Styrofoam, hand blown glass, plexiglass, and photographs. Combining the typologies and materiality with as many applied techniques, Varieties of Useful Experience presents a wide range of pieces by Hyde that include works from 1996 to 2015.

James Hyde was born in Philadelphia, and moved to New York City in the late 70’s to pursue a career as an artist. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn. His work ranges from paintings on photographic prints to large-scale installations, photography, and abstract furniture design. Mr. Hyde has lectured as a visiting professor at a number of institutions, including Yale University, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Bard College, and Cooper Union.  He is represented by galleries in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, and Copenhagen.

Mr. Hyde’s work has been exhibited at the Maison de la Culture de Bourges and the Centre d’Art Contemporain d’Ivry, Galerie Fernand Leger/Credeac in France, the San Diego Museum of Art, the Brent Sikkema Gallery and the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York, and the Zwemmer Gallery in London. In 2014 and 2015 Mr. Hyde presented over 40 works as part 20-Year Survey as part of the C.Ar.D. festival in Northern Italy. He has been honored with a Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship, among others.  Mr. Hyde’s pieces are included in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum of Art in New York, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Denver Art Museum, and the Museo Cantonale d’Arte in Lugano, Switzerland.