Hoopers Electric – Meditations in Atrament

It is impossible for me to express my gratitude to all the people who came out Tuesday night to see the opening, it was overwhelming, below I am going to try and give a brief overview of the work Exhibited in Origins of Solitude, thank you for looking.

I took a few pictures of the art before it was hung, they aren’t great shots but you’ll get the idea. This was my first solo show and I found it really difficult to create a full and varied body of work, in total I created 30 individual pieces for the show but in the end we narrowed it down to 24. I gave 1 to Abdul for helping and curating the exhibition, he was and is the man who made this happen. the other 5 I have hung at the shop and will do so until they sell (I will post pictures of them later on). I think the larger works where the most challenging, I took the approach of using them to create atmosphere adding strength to the smaller pieces.

These first three where painted with acrylic and ink, with a little acetone xerox transferring for pattern layout. they are on l’aquarelle 1198lb 40 x 60″ cold press paper. (I haven’t put any watermarks on the images so you get to fully see them, please feel free to re post them but also please give credit where appropriate, thanks!)

Celestial Horizon A – Ink, Acrylic and Xerox on Paper
40 x 60 inches

Celestial Horizon B – Ink, Acrylic and Xerox on Paper
40 x 60 inches

Celestial Horizon C – Ink, Acrylic and Xerox on Paper
40 x 60 inches

These next three are 24 x35 Arches 300lb cold pressed paper, they were created after looking at Shuzo Takiguchi’s Decalcomanias. I had been working with and looking at decalcomanias for a while but upon seeing  his work I was really moved. I subsequently used them as a starting point for this exhibition – the title Origins of Solitude comes from one of his pieces, Origin of Solitude, 1962.

Origins of Solitude A – Ink and Acrylic on Paper
24×35

Origins of Solitude B – Ink and Acrylic on Paper
24×35

Origins of Solitude C – Ink and Acrylic on Paper
35×24

These next three I created as an experiment, I wanted to work with the concept of creating some images that looked like fabric patterns, so I had a series of digitally created tessellating patterns giclee printed onto 62×42 arches cold pressed 180lb paper. I then hand colored and disrupted them to give an abstract overlay.

Abstract Horizons A – Hand colored single edition giclee print
42×62

Abstract Horizons B – Hand colored single edition giclee print
42×62

Abstract Horizons C – Hand colored single edition giclee print
42×62

The previous large paintings were used to complement the latter framed paintings, these are all of varying size (I forgot to measure before hanging the show…)

For these I used a varied selection of combined techniques, decalcomania printing, acetone xerox transfers, acrylic mediums and sumi ink washes. All these were framed in antique frames from the 1920′s-40′s, collected over the past year – I used these frames to give the individual paintings a rougher yet more complete feel.

There were also two framed prints from an edition I will be selling on Artifact very soon, these framed ones where the first in the editions and are for sale at the gallery.

Rorshach Decalcomania Hexahedron Letterpress
17.5 x24.5 Edition of 20 signed and numbered

Rorshach Decalcomania Mandala Silkscreen
22 x 30 Edition of 100 signed and numbered

The Exhibtion will be on display untill the middle of Febuary, for any info please contact the gallery  -

Nepenthes New York

307 West 38th St.
New York, NY 10018
212 643 9540
shop@nepenthesny.com

And last but not least here are some shots from the opening night taken by the talented KOKI SATO – www.kokisato.viewbook.com

Thank you again to every one who came out, and to all the guys at Nepenthes who made this possible and worked to make it such a great night.