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"Bouquet"
oil on panel
23" x 20"
(click on image for larger view) |
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"Drop"
oil on panel
23" x 20"
(click on image for larger view)
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"Green
Pill"
oil on panel
23" x 20"
(click on image for larger view)
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"Nugget"
oil on canvas
44" x 41"
(click on image for larger view)
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In his recent work, Hoge Day continues his ongoing exploration into the Pop
Art traditions of commercial design. His brightly colored new oil on panel
paintings; For the mouth in your head, reveal his own idiosyncratic interest in
the confluence of the sensual and the plastic. Day combines softly painted
passages of abstracted biomorphic imagery, of fleshy body parts or juicy food with
clear crisp reduced shapes referencing sign painting and abstracted
lettering. His immediate inspiration for the new work is the advertising on the sides
of ice cream trucks, grocery store circulars, and the plastic food displays
found in Chinese restaurant windows. By intentionally choosing these somewhat repulsive depictions of food for his starting place he then sets himself the task
of creating, through the medium of painting, real objects of desire.
Utilizing a softener brush he meticulously smooths out his layers of paint
creating a delicious and subtle surface. Hoge Day paints with the skill of an
artist who has studied and admired the old masters and their ability to paint
the sheen on a bowl of peaches. He has a painterly approach to Pop reminiscent
of the early Warhol's which reveal the presence of the artist's hand. Day
strives for the visual seduction that has always been the provenance of painting,
and now inhabits the world of advertising.
There is a certain pathos in these works, revealing our cultures disquiet
with our filtered relationship to what nourishes and spikes our appetites. Day
has written of his work "The sphere of my work is full of fleshy objects of
desire and doubt which resemble many things in the world but have in common a
morphological pressure; the feeling that they have grown to fit the shape of the
hunger or the idea that created them and wishes to receive them. I gravitate to
a kind of anthropomorphic humor, a slightly embarrassed dignity, a subtle
leer. I want to create objects that have a living quality, things that not just
stain but breathe in the memory." These new paintings by Hoge Day tease us with
their idiomatic humor and then ultimately satisfy us and our need for visual
and sensual pleasure.
-Rene Lynch
Hoge Day lives and works in Brooklyn. As well as exhibiting in previous
group shows at metaphor, he has had solo and group exhibitions in other cities
outside of NYC including; Scottsdale and Tucson AZ, the Parrish Art Museum,
Southampton, NY, and Connecticut College, New London, CT. He received his MFA
from Bard College, Annandale, NY and his BFA from Kansas City Art Institute,
Kansas City MO . He has been awarded a number of artists fellowships
including the MacDowell Colony, Virginia Center for Creative Arts and the Millay
Colony. Day's work is represented in the public collections of the Phoenix Art
Museum, McDonald's Corporation, Arizona State University, City of Phoenix,
Artisoft Corporation, and the Tucson Museum of Art.
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