Francis Hines

Hollis Taggart is pleased to present Bound in Time, the first comprehensive exhibition of the artist Francis Mattson Hines (1920-2016) since his passing. Most known for wrapping the Washington Square Arch in 1980 at the invitation of New York University, Hines produced an experimental body of work in which he pushed the boundaries of kineticism and wrapping. Bound in Time will span seven decades of the artist’s career, including over 25 sculptures, painting on canvas, and works on paper, many of which have never been exhibited before. The exhibitionwill be on view on the second floor of Hollis Taggart from October 19 through November 18, 2023, with an opening reception on Thursday, October 19, from 5-8PM. Hines’ work will also be the subject of a solo presentation at Hollis Taggart’s booth at Art Miami from December 5 through December 10, 2023.

While Hines’ wrapping of the Washington Square Arch remains an iconic moment in the history of public art in New York City, the rest of the artist’s oeuvre had been largely forgotten until last year, when the discovery of an art-filled dumpster by a car mechanic named Jared Whipple led to a focused exhibition of Hines’ work at Hollis Taggart’s Southport, CT location in the summer of 2022. Following the success of this exhibition and the subsequent growing interest in Hines’ practice, Bound in Time aims to reintroduce the artist’s work to audiences in New York City. Demonstrating how Hines was able to masterfully embody the same kineticism and tension of his large-scale public art projects in smaller works on paper and sculptures, Bound in Time will present an overview of Hines’ career, from his early figurative oil paintings from the 1960s to his various series including Hoboken Autobody (1983–86), Urban Icons (1986–87) and Mutagenesis (1986–2016).

Born in Washington, DC, in 1920, Hines attended the Cleveland School of Art (now the Cleveland Institute of Art) before serving in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers during World War II. Following the war, Hines settled in New York City, working as the chief commercial artist at G. Fox & Co, one of the largest private department stories in the country at the time. In the 1960s, his personal artistic practice started to receive attention, and in 1965, he had his first solo exhibition at the Smolin Gallery, an avant-garde art venue on 57th Street. In 1980, Hines was invited to wrap the Arch by New York University, as part of their campaign to raise funds to restore the monument after decades of blight. While it is understandable that he is most remembered for this extraordinary undertaking --- which involved a team of 23 people stretching and crisscrossing each piece of fabric tightly into a geometric pattern – the works in Bound in Time demonstrate the need for Hines’ whole oeuvre to be studied and displayed alongside his peers and in the context of the changes affecting New York and its art world from the 1960s to the 1980s.

In the Hoboken Autobody Series, for example, Hines drew inspiration from the many cars abandoned following crashes near his Manhattan studio on West Street. These works feature large sheets of Arches paper painted with hardpoint pastel and covered with stretched nylon fabric, encapsulating the tensions present in 1980s New York when the city struggled with poverty and crime. This tension extends to the sculptural works in the exhibition, including two large-scale works in which Hines stretched fabric across and over industrial rebar, as if creating three-dimensional abstract paintings using the steel as his canvas. Bound In Time also celebrates Hines’ legacy as the only artist to ever wrap buildings in Manhattan, and includes sketches for his other public wrapping projects in Manhattan, including one at the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

“We’re very excited to share more of Hines’ work with the public and to encourage connections between his oeuvre and the art movements of the time,” said Hollis Taggart. “There are fascinating historic links to be made between Hines and Abstract Expressionism, as well as between him and other artists exploring similar techniques or themes like Christo and John Chamberlain. Our hope is that by organizing a mini-retrospective in New York, more audiences become aware of Hines’ overlooked contributions to art history and that his work is studied and exhibited more in the years to come.”

Bound in Time is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue featuring introductions by Hollis Taggart and Jared Whipple and an essay by Lori Zimmer, who included Hines’ Washington Square Arch wrapping in her 2020 book Art Hiding in New York: An Illustrated Guide to the City’s Secret Masterpieces.

For more information about Francis Hines: Bound in Time, please contact us at info@hollistaggart.com or +1 212.628.4000.

For press inquiries, please contact Aga Sablinska at aga.sablinska@gmail.com or +1 862.216.6485.