Ruth Bachofner Gallery is pleased to present its first exhibition with Los Angeles-based artist Carlson Hatton. There will be a reception for the artist Saturday, March 8, 5-7 PM.
Long before Carlson Hatton's formal academic training, he was introduced to bold motion and inconceivable spatial relationships while watching cartoons in childhood. Those early impressions of intrepid imagery filter into Hatton's approach to his work, in which he sets up visually complex scenarios. Hatton taps the abundant visual information that is available to us today with increasing saturation. In particular, he is interested in recontextualizing imagery derived from magazines, art history, technology, popular culture and music. His work explores the ephemeral and congested nature of imagery, and the possibility of gleaning a sense of meaning or unity within the deluge.
In Hatton's work, forms jostle, float, fold and drape over and into one another, gathering into masses that are at once disorienting and map-like. Figurative elements merge with abstraction, to form scenes made up of visual cues that are somewhat recognizable, but retain an obscurity that keeps one navigating the dense picture plane. Working with acrylic, oil and graphite on paper offers a range of saturations, texture and immediacy not achieved on much more forgiving canvas surfaces.
Hatton states, “My work explores the limits of the visual language created to reify that which is troublesome to depict and thus dependent on illustration. The symbiotic relation or fusion of environment and figure, the passage of time, and the glow of light signifying celestial intervention. I construct Images and narratives derived from a psychotic reality that has lost visual coherence. My work explores the psychedelic mass of seemingly available and inexhaustible visuals and histories. I'm fascinated in our shared visual lexicon and its state of continuous construction that becomes denser and more impenetrable through constant development, re-visitation and re- appropriation. I see excitement in such traces because they simultaneously offer universality, superficiality, and an underlying sense of truth.”
For additional information visit the Ruth Bachofner Gsllery website.