Andy Hope 1930

Andy Hope 1930 exhibits paintings from his series Cowboys and Impressions d’Amérique in Metro Pictures’ upstairs gallery. In his Cowboys works Hope draws from classic Hollywood Westerns to make portraits of characters both real and imagined. In the work The Loveless Hope paints Montgomery Clift’s character in the John Wayne film “Red River” while in Speak Our Names two figures, one painted notably shorter than the other, wear superhero-type blue unitards, cowboy hats and boots as they walk hand-in-hand against a white background. Using swashes of color that recall the paintings of Paul Cézanne, Hope paints scenes of cowboys riding on horseback through the landscape in Impressions d’Amérique.

The works in the exhibition are a continuation of German-born Hope’s ongoing fascination with the mythology of America—the Wild West, comic book superheroes and science fiction. He has regularly combined distinctly American iconography with various modernist painting techniques to make an idiosyncratic lexicon of imagery all his own.

In 2010 Andreas Hofer renamed himself "Andy Hope 1930," the translation of his name from the original German into English, formally adopting the name he previously signed on his paintings. He chose 1930 as the year marks, for Hope, a definitive social, cultural and economic shift that paved the way for the future to come.

This is the artist's third presentation of Hope’s work at Metro Pictures.

Andy Hope 1930 has had one-person exhibitions at Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover; Inverleith House, Edinburgh; Goetz Collection, Munich; Kunsthistorisches Museum and CAC Contemporary Art Club at Theseustempel, Vienna; and MARTa Herford, Germany. His work has been included in group exhibitions at Centre Pompidou, Paris; Pinacoteca Agnelli, Turin; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; ZKM Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; and the Rubell Family Collection, Miami. Hope participated in the 2012 Gwangju Biennale.