FEATURE

Hogan Jesse (b.1982, Sydney, Australia)

After experimenting with different process, mediums and materials, Hogan was attempting to create images and sculptures that reflect the environment that surrounds them, whilst simultaneously making reference to figures of art history and the discourse of art, architecture, and design. Much of the earlier work was also laden with popular and obscure references to esoteric and modern sub-cultures.

Investigating analogous relationship between painting, video, installation and sculpture, non-physical gaps between mediums press against the architectural supports and institutional stilts of the art space optical frame. The series of works in ‘Ambivalent Conditions’, illustrate the ongoing development of Hogan’s most characteristic themes: an analysis of the nature of painting & sculpture and of its potential in terms of form, together with the possibilities opened up by combining different elements, whether found or made, in a way that augments their intrinsic material, tactile and conceptual qualities.

CYNICAL OPTIMISM

(Why a Critical analysis of the post information being? Because…) My research is based on the analysis of images and text mostly through access to the internet and printed material. In the process of producing sculpture and installation (...the exhibition as medium) the images and text (are used as a source for) INFORM the arrangement of physical forms) become physical forms which interpret the visual and textual cues – in an information embodied society - which addresses the relationship between socially critical dialogues and cultural dialogues in the discourse of formalism and materiality in Art.

In the works themselves there may not be an obvious authenticity. However, in the actual approach there is sincerity / a ‘sincere intention / intention’ in the acknowledgement (too a genealogy of discourse) and debt to the thoughts of the past and (The Complexity of - the possibility that – every idea and avenue has been done / played out – (a daunting notion, but one and something that can be fuel for production not a hindrance)… Contrarily, On the contrary, there also exists a contemptuous tongue in cheek approach to historicity and originality…, where historical works are subtly parodied / satirized awaiting for the Audience to second guess the austerity behind the works intention. What appears is as an earnest homage to abstraction, minimalism, conceptual and social art practice can be a silently muted sarcasm of art histories sincerity and the culturally specific indulgence of art language and art discourse. There exists a displaced tension between the love and frustration of contemporary art…

…Furthermore, all artworks now are more or less recombination’s or altered re-creations of already created artwork and events (from the perspective that the social reception of an artwork in an acknowledged discourse is a kind of event) - the idea has already been executed, other artists have previously and are currently reproducing and reenacting all art from the past in their own words and with new vocabularies. It is in the process where the act of reference, reproduction or appropriation that we form the contemporary.

That such a transition in time and a re-entry point in a contemporary continuum opens into the artist’s current position and in the encounter with art, the technical and cultural production that is made punctures the continuum and ruptures the chronological concept of art history. All production is in a sense anachronistic. It can occasionally become a process of undermining the historical and cultural and technical awareness of the audience. The art systems obsession with the New, the un-explored idea, and a lingering focus on the myths of Originality, Authorship, Genius, innovation and Copyright, Cultural Identity / Identity. The whole artworld and society suffers from collective (cultural) Amnesia. In the Amnesic Model / There is both space to play with the knowability of art, history and ontology and also remind the Audiences of what they should or don’t already know.

Super Negative affirmations

The wild is fractured and ruptured beyond repair. There are no convincing directions left to turn in a society that eats Facebook for breakfast. The artists in our shows have transgressed past negotiable optimism to an intellectual local too cool to care anymore how we document this thing. There is now the wave of pessimist beauty, tactile feelinglessness,,,
It is just by gesture that the whole idea of contemporary art is represented. While at the same time questioning authorship, originality and the role of painting. Awareness of multiple conceptual frameworks and contexts is straight forward and quite obvious.‍

What is it that makes painting theory … that much more difficult to derive logical frameworks for analysis is the non-mechanical mode of production which lends itself to many subjective malfunctions on technical and conceptual levels. Compared to that of photography and film which through its mechanical certainty we can ascertain a qualitative framework. Painting is almost Un qualitative in its scope unless categorized into sub sections of specific frameworks with specific criteria. This is perhaps what makes painting so dissatisfactory in the contemporary field of discussion and yet what also maintains paintings specificity. Photography and film with its supposed objective mechanical recording of the real world or at least its record of light, space and time make it compatible for concrete dialogue on subject and culture. Painting however cannot objectively share this representation reliably and therefore falls short of it role as social observer and representative of truth.‍

Assumptions‍

“Books are the best medium for the artists of our times,” says Sol LeWitt. Actually, a well-made art or picture book is like a gallery in an easy-to-handle book format. From this perspective, it also has to fulfil the same quality demands as a museum or a gallery. Concept, design and selection of materials are important.

PHYSICAL DETRITUS. Physical Detritus.‍

The looping regression of Modernism

When we write about our practice something is lost, there is a clear divide between descriptive language as to theoretically place practice into a context and between actively writing in a mode of generative thought. Although I can construct a descriptive out line about my aesthetic, process and production, and further align my work in a discourse of artists - I am opting to avoid this habitual language in favor of freeing the use of language to the operation of free thinking. There are infinite variables of constructing that formulation on practices and every time something is added something is lost. This aligns the past of the contemporary though western discourse and then in Japanese terms. It's playing with the post structuralist notion that there is no meaning other than the meaning that is constructed, rather there is a multiplicity of meanings. Although it appears dualistic and ambivalent, it is rather static and negates its own seriousness through dry humor.