Hunted Projects is delighted to announce Wiper Quad, a solo exhibition of new paintings by London based artist Alexis Harding. This marks Harding’s debut exhibition with the gallery.

Renowned for his radical engagement with the medium, Harding navigates the fertile space between abstraction and representation, reimagining the boundaries of painting through a distinctly time-based and process-oriented practice. At the heart of his work lies an ongoing dialogue between control and chance, structure and rupture, surface and depth.

In Wiper Quad, each painting is subjected to a precise yet unpredictable set of material conditions. Using extended drying times and carefully timed interventions, Harding creates a volatile surface where transformation is both intentional and unexpected. This temporal delay allows the work to absorb its surroundings - welcoming intuition, accident, and fluctuation as essential elements of the painting process.

Alexis Harding’s paintings are born from an unconventional and highly distinctive process. Each work begins with a base layer of oil paint, infused with viscous mediums to extend its drying time over several weeks. Over this slow-drying foundation, parallel bands of vibrant gloss paint are poured through a length of evenly punctured guttering pipe, that begins to harden within hours. As the two layers interact, a complex, wrinkled skin forms on the surface - one that Harding cuts into, drags, wipes, and weaves back into the underlying layer, creating a dynamic interplay of tension, texture, and transformation. “It’s always been about creating a body of work that starts in the same place but diverges dramatically,” Harding notes. What might initially appear as a unified system is soon fractured, unsettled - echoing bodily rhythms and the instability of time passing.

Central to Harding’s approach is the choreography of material behaviour. Paint is made to slip, fold, blister, or collapse - gestures that may appear spontaneous are carefully orchestrated. These ruptures are not accidents but revelations: points where the material speaks, wrinkling like skin, suggesting a quiet figuration born from process and decay. “I’m constantly negotiating where to begin and where to stop,” he reflects. “That push and pull with formalism is part of the work’s internal tension.”

Since the mid-1990s, Alexis Harding has pursued a singular and rigorous exploration of painting. His early work challenged the conventions of abstraction with a rebellious physicality, evolving into a broader investigation of the medium’s possibilities. Through inventive use of time-sensitive materials and subversion of formal systems, Harding has continually expanded the language of painting. Widely regarded as one of the most innovative figures of his generation, his practice continues to redefine what painting can be - visceral, unpredictable, and alive.