IAN HOKIN: MIRAGE

Ian Hokin Mirage

Cirrus 2014

Ian Hokin Mirage

September 13 - October 25, 2014 Opening reception: Opening reception: September 13, 6 -8 pm September 13, 6 -8 pm Cirrus Gallery Cirrus Gallery 542 S. Alameda St. 542 S. Alameda St. Los Angeles, CA 90013 Los Angeles, CA 90013 ptember 13 October 25, 2014

Cirrus 2014

Ian Hokin

By Alexander Meadows

Painting is and always will be an extension of the self. It is by no means a technology. Like many mediums it is capable of being a vessel for Subjectivity. The Subjectivity could be thought of as the first layer of a being that surrounds the very part of us that is differentiated as a unique position in consciousness. That region behind this layer is the Self. Therefore, anything that passes through our Subjectivity, and enters the Self, will be digested by the Self and altered before it is released outward again. When this is recognized by the Artist, and is made the central focus of his work, the Artist is capable of being a vessel for things outside of the Subjectivity within himself. Thus his work is making a new vessel that contains his Self, conflated with the input that has passed through his Subjectivity. This new vessel contains information not found anywhere outside the Self. Therefore, it can provide experience beyond the information itself. Within the Subjectivity we can find content capable of transcending limitations, such as the known or the relative. By investigating the internal side of the Subjectivity first, the artist can attempt to find a form best understood without the use of language. Producing content that is capable of playing directly in contact

with the internal Subjectivity of the viewer.

Translating an aware extension of the self would require a fixed position of physicality in painting, with an oscillation between the fixed qualities of the medium and its infinite possibilities of chance. Ian Hokin’s paintings put a microscope on that very pendulum. His paintings have vibratory qualities in both content and medium. The content moves between familiar and unfamiliar, haunting and comfort, fixed and unknown meaning. The content lives within the ripple of the medium and does not rest within its spectrum. A visual form of the Self is the content being translated by the medium, but this point barely gets across. Hokin’s images are cut out by layers that function more as windows than stacked pieces. The eye is drug forward and backwards, over intention and chance, The depth accordions between flat and extensive, and we find external measurements don’t apply here.

There’s an attempt to blur the barriers of content and medium, narrative and time, the figure and the viewer.

An artist is capable of making an open system. An open system is like a live current, its content changes

Summer Home, 2014 Acrylic and oil on canvas, 48" x 36"

Mirage installation view

and adapts with the presence of a viewer. But this is an internal experience that is defined by the intermingling of the subjectivity of viewer with the contents of the vessel. This happens within the viewer and is not locatable as material information. A closed system does not contain an extension of the Artist, stemming from within his Self.

Instead is contains a formulation of things from outside of the Artist’s Self, that mirrors his Subjectivity. In this way it is an extension of the Self in the form of reflection. It contains a set of possible pathways for a viewer to find reflections.

“To behold, use, or perceive any extension of ourselves in technological form is necessarily to embrace it. To listen to radio or to read the primed page is to accept these extensions of ourselves into our personal system and to undergo the “closure” or displacement of perception that follows automatically.

It is this continuous embrace of our technology in daily use that puts us in the Narcissus role of subliminal awareness and numbness in relation to these images of ourselves.”(Mcluhan)

Without recognizing this crucial difference, an artist makes pieces that are closed systems, by amputating these extensions of the Self. When we experience this amputated closed system, we are unable to feel ourselves within this system, causing within us with a numbing sensation. This is actually a defense mechanism generated in an effort to protect us from something that is otherwise highly over stimulating. Amputation implies separation, and no recognition of the Self. The poet William Blake’s Jerusalem, interpreted by Marshall McLuhan in his essay The Gadget Lover, believed that “Blake, in a word, sees man as fragmented by his technologies. But he insists that these technologies are self-amputations of our own organs. When so amputated, each organ becomes a closed system of great new intensity that hurls man into “martyrdoms and wars.” Moreover, Blake announces as his theme in Jerusalem the organs of perception:

The difference lies within the experience that the viewer has of an art object. An offering for the viewer that is assembled by things outside of the maker’s Self, provokes in the viewer an attempt to locate meaning in relativism. If meaning isn’t located, it can cause a perplexing sensation.

The viewer wants to dismantle its parts and find meaning, and within this process, the viewer usually does not experience himself. At best, he is compelled to dismantle the assembly and find the origins of its relative parts. The underlying content of this art object should be perceived as a distraction from the viewer’s Self, in the form of a perplexing numbing sensation. A vessel to contain something other than the experience of the Self is about as useful as an amputated arm.

If Perceptive Organs vary, Objects of perception seem to vary: If Perceptive Organs close, their objects seem to close also.

The internal realm of the Subjectivity is found in no other location within all of materiality, and all of consciousness. It can express itself in visual language. Working from images seen within the Self, Hokin reaches at the possibility of not amputating these extensions upon releasing

Mirage, 2013 Acrylic and oil on canvas, 24” x 30”

B.T. (Blue-Tooth), 2014 Acrylic and oil on canvas, 24"x 30”

them. Instead making a vessel that contains something that is aware. Our awareness of what these images are is transferred into the still intact extension.

This could explain the presence of the figure in Hokin’s imagery. Placing a visual form in the world within a vessel presents an opportunity for experiencing an extension of the Self as an open channel. This allows for felt experience of push and pull between observer and observed. This does not generate a numbing effect, but instead the object is open ended, and the subjective observer is enabled to define encountering it. This allows for interpretation of experience, not just interpretation of information. The work is in perpetuation state of re-definition.

Viewer is anchored in the center of a teeter, and as the experience is defined.

Much a like a tripping cord, the viewer is hurled into a balancing act, and the Self must define the rules of gravity.

Viewer is being called into play. Thus the viewer’s own Self must, whether consciously or subconsciously, reveal itself and distill what is happening.

McLuhan, Marshall: Understanding media the Extensions of Man. The Gadget Lover. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. London, England. 1964? _______ The answer, of course, is that all of us are both. For this is a

Counting Sheep, 2013 Acrylic and oil on canvas, 24” x 20”

Mirage installation view

King of the Grapes, 2014 Acrylic, oil, and mixed media on canvas, 30" x 36�

King of the Grapes

King of the Grapes detail

The Entertainer, 2014 Acrylic, oil and mixed media on canvas, 22" x 28�

Dream Home, 2014 Oil on canvas, 20" x 24�

"Breakfast Nook", 2014 Acrylic, oil, and mixed media on canvas, 22" x 28"

"Breakfast Nook" , Acrylic, Oil, and Mixed Media on Canvas, 22"x28 " ,

Mirage installation view

Untitled, 2014 Acrylic and oil on canvas, 40” x 30”

Untitled detail

Opening reception, September 13, 2014

Opening reception, September 13, 2014

Opening reception, September 13, 2014

Ian Hokin: Mirage

“Dream Home”, 2014 Oil on canvas 20” x 24” $3000

“Breakfast Nook”, 2014 Acrylic, oil and mixed media on canvas 22” x 28” $3,000

“The Entertainer”, 2014 Acrylic, oil and mixed media on canvas 22” x 28” $3,000

“Summer Home”, 2014 Acrylic and oil on canvas 48” x 36” $4,500

“King of the Grapes”, 2014 Acrylic, oil and mixed media on canvas 30” x 36” $3,500

“Mirage”, 2013 Acrylic and oil on canvas 24” x 30” $3,000

“Untitled”, 2014 Acrylic and oil on canvas 40” x 30” $4,000

“Counting Sheep”, 2013 Acrylic and oil on canvas 24” x 20” $3,000

“B.T. (Blue-Tooth)”, 2014 Acrylic and oil on canvas 24” x 30” $3,500

Gallery Hours Tues-Sat, 10am-5pm www. cirrusgallery.com • cirrus@cirrusgallery.com CONTEMPORARY PAINTING AND SCULPTURE • PUBLISHERS OF FINE ART GRAPHICS 542 South Alameda Street, Los Angeles, California 90013 • T 213.680.3473 • F 213.680.0930

Ian Hokin Education 2011 MFA, The California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA 2007 BFA, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL Solo Exhibitions 2014 Mirage, Cirrus Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 2013 Garbagio, The Chapel, USC Roski School of Fine Art, Los Angeles, CA 2011 Bad News , The Green Gallery, Milwaukee, WI! 2007 The Green Gallery, Milwaukee, WI Roots and Culture Gallery, (project space) Chicago, IL Group Exhibitions 2014 Another Cats Show, 356 Mission Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Annual Benefit Auction, The Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA 2013 ArtForum, Brennan and Griffin, New York City, NY I am the doer and the enjoyer, Secret Recipe Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 2011 Group Show, The West Street Gallery, New York City, NY Nada Art Fair, The West Street Gallery (New York City, NY), Miami Beach, FL Head’s With Tails, Harris Lieberman Gallery, New York City, New York Group Show, ArtMur Gallery, Montreal, Canada

2010 To Face:A Portrait Show, Lloyd Dobler Gallery, Chicago, IL 2009 Wallgasm, Angstrom Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Lovable Like Orphan Kitties and Bastard Children, The Green Gallery, Milwaukee, Wisconsin Presents, curated by Milwauke International, Rowley Kennerk Gallery, Chicago, IL For Every Occasion (Drawing Show), Thrones Gallery, Chicago, IL 2008 The Black Dragon Society, The Black Dragon Society, Los Angeles, CA The Dark Fair, Swiss Institute, General Store, New York, NY The Milwaukee International, The Green Gallery, Milwaukee, WI Heartworks, HIV/AIDS Benefit Auction, curated by Chris Veit, Ice Box Project Space, Philadelphia, PA In the Eye of the Wolf, The Lloyd Dobbler Gallery, Chicago, Il 2007 One Foot High and Rising, curated by Pentti Monkkonen, Balmoral Gallery, Los Angeles, CA The Rotten Poster Show, curated by Nicolas Frank, INOVA, Milwaukee, WI 2006 The Small Painting Show, curated by the General Store, Ulrich Museum, KS Performances 2014 Moon Dust, Scenes in Feature film by artist Scott Reeder, Los Angeles, CA 2007 Frieze Cheese, with Scott and Tyson Reeder, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, Frieze Fair, London The Piano Boys, with Scott and Tyson Reeder, Jack Hanley Gallery, Los Angeles

Reviews/ Publications 2011 Going’s On About Town, ART, The New Yorker, NY, 9/5/2011 Head’s With Tails , Art in Review, New York Times, NY, 8/18/2011 http://www.galleristny.com/2011/12/nada-miami-beach-outperforms/ 2009 www.avclub.com/milwaukee/articles/now-hanging-lovable-like-orphankitties- andbastar,28260/ There is still some presents to Unwrap, Erik Wenzel, Artslant Chicago, January 2008 Matthew Higgs: #4, The Dark Fair, Matthew Higgs, Artforum, Dec. issue Looking Out For: five artists taking their work to the forefront of Fine Art, Plastique Fashion Magazine, September issue, London, UK Milwaukee International Art Fair, Donald Morgan, ANP Quarterly, Volume 2, #1 The Dark Fair, Nancy Smith, artloversnewyork.com, New York, N.Y, April 20th Scott and Tyson Reeder talk to each other, nyartsmagazine.com, January/ February 2007 Freestyle Paintings, Judith Ann Moriarty, The Shepard Express, Milwaukee, WI

Copyright Cirrus Editions ltd. Š 2014

Cirrus 2014

cirrus editions ltd Š 2014