The first thing that strikes me about the barbershop in Hurvin Anderson’s painting Flat Top are the straight lines. They echo through the rectangular shapes scattered across the wall, making a patchwork of shapes that Anderson has called cubist. The second thing that strikes me are the hair clippings that lie across the floor, disrupting the geometric tightness of the composition with their tufty irregularity. It is a vibrant, living scene, rich with dissonant colours and tactile textures.
Art history and the legacy of western painting is the point of departure for Hurvin Anderson’s new show. The works, made between 2006 and 2023, depict imagined barbershop spaces inspired by real ones. Anderson calls them “social spaces” in the tradition of the cafe paintings of the impressionists. Over the course of this hymn to the Black British Caribbean community, Anderson explores the reaches of the shapes that make up the space.
