Hugh Hayden: Homecoming, featuring all new artworks by the Dallas-born artist (who grew up just north of Duncanville) opens Sat., Sept. 14 at the Nasher Sculpture Center. One of the key pieces in Hayden’s exhibition is a large sculpture inspired by his memories of the original Kidsville playground. The internationally acclaimed artist is now based in Brooklyn, NY.
A key element of Homecoming is Brush, Hayden’s sculptural rendition of the Duncanville, TX playground known as Kidsville. Following the fundraising and construction model championed by Robert Leathers, an artist and architect known as the “guru of contemporary playground design,” Kidsville was entirely imagined, designed, funded, and built by volunteer residents of the Dallas suburb in 1989. The characteristic feature of Leathers’s playground model was the use of unpainted wood as a building material, with a style that evoked treehouses or medieval forts.
Over the years, this type of playground architecture has slowly disappeared from parks and schoolyards, to be replaced by the industrially fabricated, metal and plastic equipment that characterizes most playgrounds today (including Duncanville’s, which was updated in April of this year). Hayden’s foregrounding of Kidsville in Homecoming emphasizes the theme of nostalgia that permeates the exhibition. Here, the artist reminisces on the innocence of childhood play and the kind of community engagement that made Kidsville’s construction possible.
Kidsville Exhibition
Hayden divided the gallery into two distinct halves suggestive of domestic and public spaces using architecture to physically compartmentalize the hall and objects that evoke elements found in the home or school. Centered between these two realms, this sculpture highlights the increasing lack of “third places”—those spaces outside of home, work, or school, that are freely accessible to the public and provide opportunities for socializing in the physical world. Several factors of contemporary life have contributed to the loss of third places: the rise of social media and social-distancing practices left over from the COVID-19 pandemic (which forced the temporary closure of many playgrounds, including Kidsville in 2020) being the most significant.
While Hayden centers his example of a third place here, it remains inaccessible. He covered much of Brush with boar hair bristles, a material commonly used in hairbrushes. Strategically applied to areas of the equipment that might otherwise invite engagement—steps, ladders, handrails, or bridges, for example—the bristles subvert any intended use of the playground. Hayden’s application of boar hair also references the kind of grooming rituals occurring in barber shops and hair salons: third places that are historically and culturally significant to Black communities, especially as safe havens to gather, socialize, and discuss politics.
Working in the tradition of wood carving and carpentry, Hayden builds sculptures and installations that explore the idea of the “American Dream.” Church pews, a dinner table and chairs, or a football helmet—signifiers of faith, family, and athletics—become surreal and somewhat sinister subjects in the hands of Hayden, who frequently carves thorns and branches into surfaces of things that would normally come into contact with the human body, implying potential harm, or at least discomfort, should they be engaged with.
Hugh Hayden
Hugh Hayden was born in Dallas in 1983, and lives and works in New York City. He holds an MFA from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University. Hayden’s work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions in the United States and abroad. Recent solo exhibitions include public art installations, Huff and a Puff, at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA (2023), and Brier Patch, at the Madison Square Park Conservancy in New York, NY, which later traveled to the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, NC, and Dumbarton Oaks Gardens in Washington, DC. Other solo institutional and gallery exhibitions include Boogey Men at Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, Miami, FL, which traveled to the Blaffer Art Museum, Houston, TX; Huey, Lisson Gallery, New York, NY; Hues, C L E A R I N G, Brussels, Belgium; Hugh Hayden: American Food, Lisson Gallery, London, UK; Hugh Hayden: Creation Myths, Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ; and Hugh Hayden, White Columns, New York, NY. Recent group exhibitions include Forest of Dreams: Contemporary Tree Sculpture, Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MI (2023), and NGV Triennial, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia (2023).
Hayden is the recipient of residencies at Glenfiddich in Dufftown, Scotland (2014); Abrons Art Center and Socrates Sculpture Park (both 2012), and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (2011). Hayden holds positions on advisory councils at Columbia University School of the Arts, Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, and Cornell College of Architecture Art and Planning. His work is part of public collections at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY, USA; Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, Miami, FL, USA; deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA; Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ; Smart Museum, Chicago, IL and more.
Nasher Sculpture Center
The Hugh Hayden: Homecoming Exhibition runs through Jan. 5, 2025 at the Nasher Sculpture Center, 2001 Flora Street in the Dallas Arts District. An Artist Talk with Hugh Hayden will take place Sat., Sept. 14 at 1:30 p.m. Registration is free for Nasher Members and students; $10 for non-members (includes museum admission). In-person and open to the public. Advance registration required (limited seating available).
The Nasher Sculpture Center’s 2024 exhibitions are made possible by leading support from Frost Bank. Hayden’s exhibition is made possible by leading support from the TACA New Works Fund.
