Gregory Hodge
Echo
Brussels
September 12 – October 17, 2025
Unlike society’s current infatuation with fast-paced moving images, slowing down can be beneficial. Gregory Hodge’s paintings demand that time, inviting viewers to fully appreciate them, to take everything in, and to let the work gradually unfold. In many ways, they stand in direct contrast to the overload of short clips that dominate modern media consumption. These paintings cannot be appreciated in a fleeting glance; they require sustained looking. In doing so, Hodge compels his audience to slow down and shift their perspective. His works invite engagement on multiple levels, engaging both the surface and the image. Hypnotic patterns draw viewers in and spark curiosity about his painting process when seen up close. From a distance, these patterns coalesce into tranquil, poetic scenes.
Hodge’s distinctive patterns stem from his deep interest in tapestries, a natural outcome of living and working in France and completing two residencies at the Cité Internationale des Arts. There, he closely studied French tapestry art and became enamored with 19th-century painters like Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, and Édouard Vuillard, who explored texture and light. “While the interest in tapestries was a really important part of the research I was doing at the Cité Internationale des Arts, I feel that my new paintings are circling back to a conversation about painting itself,” says Hodge. The paintings make look like tapestries, but are not bound to the rules what tapestry might look like. In a way, Hodge reminds us where the true freedom and beauty of painting lies: breaking out of existing systems, expectations and rules, to create something new.
The works in Echo elaborate on this mimicry of tapestries. The intricacy and detail in Hodge’s paintings guide the viewer’s gaze, distracting from the underlying image by revealing themselves gradually, creating a compelling, prolonged viewing experience. The works invite close inspection to decipher their layers. Using specially adapted combs, brushes, and handcrafted tools, Hodge creates drag-like marks that evoke the warp and weft of woven fabrics: “Dragging paint allows me to explore personal, intimate subject matter.” This slow, deliberate process mirrors the craftsmanship of tapestries, which were historically handwoven over months. The result is canvases with a distinctly artisanal quality, perfectly mimicking the optical qualities of tapestry art on a painted surface.
Gestural abstraction or abstract expressionism are not what Hodge aims for. For him, his work is about mimicry when it comes to the detailed patterns in his work. Up close, his canvases can feel like an abstract maze. Even when viewed from a distance, the images seem to flicker in and out of recognition. Hodge achieves this effect using translucent acrylic paint and pigmented gels, creating shifting tones and hues. Web-like structures and translucent textures distort and blur the images, lending a hazy, film-like quality. “By applying and then partially removing layers of paint, I try to create a sense of excavation, as if pulling the light forward from beneath the surface,” said Hodge.
Once known for bold abstraction, Hodge now navigates a dynamic interplay between abstraction and imagery. His paintings dissolve visual fragments of daily life (interiors, flowers, patterned fabrics, landscapes, window views, or atmospheric skies) into layered, ambiguous compositions, reminiscent of the 19th-century Nabis group that bridged Impressionism and modern art. These scenes often originate from photographs of real-life moments, offering a glimpse into the artist’s daily life and personal memories.
“The title of this exhibition suggests the way images in these paintings reappear like familiar but distorted memories, seen for a moment before dissolving into veils of color and abstraction, leaving only a trace behind.” Hodge created this series specifically with the Brussels gallery space in mind, designing works that respond to the building’s expansive yet intimate character. The way light streams into the gallery from both sides, casting warm blankets of sunlight onto the paintings, complements the central role of light in Hodge’s work. “I am drawn to the way light filters through trees, reflects on water, or glows through a window. In many of these paintings, it feels as though the light is coming from behind, like a light box, a soft backlight shining through the image.”
Echo further demonstrates the remarkable evolution in Gregory Hodge’s practice as he continues to explore the interplay of perception, memory, and material in unexpected ways. What began as purely gestural abstraction has transformed into expressive strokes layered over figurative scenes, which have now become the scenes themselves, revealing their entirety with increasing openness. “A painting can hold a moment that feels both recognizable and elusive, suspended between clarity and abstraction.”
Gregory Hodge (b.1982, lives and works in Paris, FR) holds a BFA from the Australian National University Canberra School of Art, Canberra, AU and graduated there as a Doctor of Philosophy/Fine Arts. He has had solo exhibitions with Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney and Melbourne, AU; Galerie Anne-Laure Buffard, Paris, FR; Le Pavé d’Orsay, Paris, FR and Bus Projects, Melbourne, AU. Recent group exhibitions were held at Manly Art Gallery & Museum, Sydney, AU; L’Ancien Theatre, Beaune, FR; Carriageworks Sydney, AU and Sullivan+Strumpf, Sydney, AU. His work is held in public collections like the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, AU; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, AU and the Thrivent Art Collection, Minneapolis, MN, US.